From Wild Virginia:
Virginia State Water Control Board Consents to Further Assault on State Waters by MVP
Today, the Virginia State Water Control Board approved an application for Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) to cut and blast through hundreds of our waters and create new discharges, further damaging our streams and wetlands with its destructive project.
Wild Virginia deeply regrets that the Board, for the second time, has rejected the facts and legal rationale that should have prevented their approval. The promoters of the MVP have never provided the kind of proof necessary to justify its proposal under water quality laws, because they cannot. There was no rational basis to conclude that this project can be completed in a way that protects water quality. Yet, the Board swept those issues aside and claimed there was a “reasonable assurance” that all of our standards would be met under MVP’s scheme.
David Sligh, Wild Virginia’s Conservation Director stated:
“This is a heartbreaking decision. Yet another public agency that’s supposed to protect us and our natural treasures has failed to live up to the standards we have a right to expect. No single project in Virginia in decades has presented a threat to our precious resources even close to the scope and scale of those MVP poses. The pipeline builders have already harmed hundreds of waterbodies and residents along its destructive path. The Board could have, and should have, acted to prevent further destruction.”
Sligh continued, “MVP must know that today’s decision will not be the end of this story. As we have for seven years, we and our allies continue to demand the protections we deserve, in every forum available to us. This project should never be completed and we will never rest as long as the threat exists.”
One of many grounds that should have guided the Board’s decision is the record of violations of water quality requirements amassed over the last three years. Wild Virginia just completed an analysis of a huge body of state inspection reports, Documenting the Damage, using the Department of Environmental Quality’s own records to show that MVP has violated the rules more than 1,500 times throughout the life of this project. And the DEQ has consistently failed to acknowledge the magnitude of these problems or take effective action to stop them. DEQ’s description of MVP’s record of violations to the Board was inaccurate and woefully incomplete. If the Board had allowed the public to speak to DEQ’s response to public comments, in accordance with its long-standing practice, the members would have heard the fuller, more accurate story. This shortcut to the procedures by the Board let both them and the public down.
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