Natural Gas Pipelines Encroach on Appalachia

In August, a West Virginia circuit court judge ruled in favor of Bryan and Doris McCurdy of Greenville, W. Va., denying the Mountain Valley Pipeline project access to their private property to conduct a survey. This proposed natural gas pipeline would stretch 300 miles from northwest West Virginia to southern Virginia, but the judge ruled that the pipeline operators “failed to establish that the project would provide sufficient public use to justify entering private property without an owner’s permission,” according to an article by the Associated Press.

Another proposed natural gas project, Atlantic Coast Pipeline LLC, officially applied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in September for permission to begin construction on a 564-mile pipeline that would extend from north-central West Virginia, across Virginia and into North Carolina. The project is expected to cost $5.1 billion.
— By Elizabeth E. Payne