Community members have fought this pipeline for 10 years — pointing out its many flaws and dangers and winning court battles by proving developers and regulators were ignoring laws meant to protect communities and the environment. Now, those regulators allow the pipeline to go into service.
Today, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has allowed the Mountain Valley Pipeline to go in-service. This announcement arrives after a decade of community-led resistance to the pipeline project. MVP has doubled in cost and delayed completion for six years due to failures to comply with environmental protections and resulting legal challenges.
When Congress placed a thumb on the scale to mandate approval of Mountain Valley Pipeline’s permits in June 2023, construction resumed and communities along the route expressed deep concerns about the use of degraded materials and rushed construction practices.
The Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of the Sierra Club and Appalachian Voices, has filed a lawsuit challenging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s decision to approve the 32-mile Cumberland Pipeline — a dangerous and unnecessary methane gas pipeline.
Yesterday, Mountain Valley Pipeline sent a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission asking the agency’s director of the Office of Energy Projects for official permission to place MVP in service.
Late yesterday, a number of conservation groups filed a petition in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit challenging a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission decision to extend the Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity for Mountain Valley Pipeline’s Southgate Project.
Even as Mountain Valley Pipeline’s rushed construction results in landslides and muddy waters in Virginia and concerned residents call for state and federal authorities to stop the damage, communities to the south are facing new and changing threats from the pipeline’s proposed Southgate extension.
FERC’s decision to give the green light to this dangerous methane gas pipeline project ignores the significant and long-lasting damage it will do to the climate, utility customers, and Tennessee communities.
With a wholly new project that requires an ‘open season’ to find customers, FERC should cancel the original Southgate Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity and send the developers back to the drawing board.
Along the route of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, citizen monitors have watched a frenzy of workers hurriedly lower sun-bleached and degraded pipe into trenches, burying as much material as possible. Although safety concerns led the agency tasked with pipe safety, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, to issue a consent agreement, the agreement has not brought peace of mind.
