• Comment Deadline – U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

    U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has issued a MVP public comment period ending 2/10/2023 Resources: POWHR How to Comment Guide (USACE) Coalition Talking points


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  • Comment Deadline – U.S. Forest Service

    Mountain Valley Pipeline and Equitrans Expansion Project Draft Supplemental EIS #50036 – deadline February 21, 2023  Resources: POWHR How to Comment Guide (USFS) Coalition Talking points Petitions: Appalachian Voices; NRDC


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  • Renewal of Resistance: An Evening with #StopMVP ARTivists

    “Renewal of Resistance” is an event to replenish our movement in the New Year. After four victories against Senator Manchin’s Dirty Deal and other wins and losses last year, folks are understandably tired! Jan 31, 2023 07:00 PM EST “Renewal of Resistance” will gather people on Zoom from all over the country to hear the voices, see the dances, and feel the words of amazing artists from Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina. Hosted by Callie Pruett of acclaimed podcast Appodlachia, this event will feature poetry readings by Crystal Good, Mara Robbins, and Steven Licardi; musical performances…


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  • MVP Comment Writing Party

    Wild Virginia, Appalachian Voices, and POWHR welcome you to an online event to help you make effective comments in response to a public notice. Join us on Wednesday, January 25 at 7 p.m. We have another chance to tell the U.S. Forest Service that the Mountain Valley Pipeline’s attempt to cut and blast across our Jefferson National Forest must be rejected. Construction would further pollute our waters in West Virginia And Virginia, destroy vital forest habitats, and harm our communities. The Forest Service was forced to prepare a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) after citizens defeated two earlier flawed…


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  • No Dirty Deal Call

    Join the People vs. Fossil Fuels coalition, POWHR and 7 Directions of Service for an update on our fight to stop Sen. Manchin and Schumer’s dirty deal. This call will be led by leaders on the frontlines of campaigns to stop fossil fuel projects, including the Mountain Valley Pipeline. The intention of this virtual call is to uplift frontline voices in the fight against the dirty deal, share updates on the political landscape we are in right now, and provide organizations and other coalition members with ways to take action as we head into the next phase of…


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  • Mountain Valley Pipeline halts eminent domain actions for Southgate extension

    By: Charlie Paullin, Virginia Mercury October 21, 2022 Mountain Valley Pipeline has decided to withdraw eminent domain actions against land in North Carolina the company sought for its Southgate extension, a 75-mile offshoot of the main pipeline that would carry gas from Pittsylvania south to Rockingham and Alamance counties. “As the timing, design, and scope of this project continue to be evaluated, MVP has elected to dismiss this action, believing that to be the appropriate course of action for the time being and a demonstration of its desire to work cooperatively and in good faith with landowners and communities along the pipeline’s route,” said the motion filed Friday in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. But the company asked for the dismissal without prejudice, which would allow it to pursue eminent domain actions against the properties again. Mountain Valley “has not abandoned this project,” the pipeline wrote. Shawn Day, a spokesperson for the MVP Southgate project, reiterated the motion’s language, adding, “Mountain Valley remains committed to the MVP Southgate project, which is needed to help North Carolina achieve its lower-carbon energy goals and meet current and future residential and commercial demand for natural gas in the region.” “Proceedings currently remain under way with respect to a small number of tracts” along the proposed Southgate route in Virginia, Day added. A condition of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s approval of the Southgate project in 2020 was that construction of the extension would not begin until the company received the required federal permits for the mainline system and the Director of the Office of Energy Projects, or its designee, lifted a stop-work order and authorized the project. The pipeline regained life in August after FERC extended its October 2022 completion deadline by four years. Regulators said their decision was an administrative one and that the proceedings were not the proper time to revisit the project’s approval. At that time, a company spokesperson said the company remains committed to securing federal and state permits to bring the project into service in the second half of 2023. Mountain Valley has said the main line is 94% complete, although some opponents dispute the company’s numbers. However, Mountain Valley still lacks necessary permits to complete the pipeline. An effort by U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, to force approval and completion of the project through federal legislation on permitting reform stalled this fall. The Southgate extension has also run into problems. In 2021, the Virginia State Air Pollution Control Board denied an air permit for a proposed compressor station in Pittsylvania that was crucial to ensure gas could flow from Virginia into North Carolina. The denial triggered General Assembly legislation transferring permitting authority from the citizen air board to the state Department of Environmental Quality. North Carolina had also previously denied Southgate a required water permit, citing “unnecessary and avoidable impacts to surface waters and riparian buffers.” Environmental activists on Friday celebrated Mountain Valley’s voluntary dismissal of its eminent domain actions. “Today we can exhale. We still have a long way to go, but the road gets shorter,” said Crystal Cavalier Keck, co-founder of 7 Directions of Service, an indigenous people’s activist group, in a statement. “This decision is more proof that the MVP is destined for defeat.” Read the article at Virginia Mercury


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  • Stop the Mountain Valley Pipeline Action Party

    The International Energy Agency has concluded that there must be no new oil, gas or coal development if the world is to reach net zero by 2050. On September 6th at 7 pm (ET), Climate Action Now will host a free action party with four extraordinary activists battling the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) and Senator Manchin’s side deal to accelerate new fossil fuel infrastructure. Register Today! Our featured guests will brief us on what’s at stake…


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  • No Sacrifice Zones: Appalachian Resistance comes to DC September 8th!

    In order to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, Senators Manchin and Schumer made a deal which introduces a separate piece of legislation that would fast-track permit approvals for fossil fuel projects in September. While no one has seen the official legislation, the leaked one-page summary of the deal limits foundational environmental protections, endangers public health, fast-tracks fossil fuels, and pushes approval for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, and a draft legislation text even bears the watermark from the American Petroleum Institute.  This side deal has been written by and for the fossil fuel industry, and further causes concerns for frontline communities. The summary document released by Manchin’s office would introduce a wide range of changes to the time tables of the decisions made by regulatory agencies reviewing energy projects under the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act and other authorities These changes include, among other revisions: Reinstating limitations on state authority under the Clean Water Act that were made during the Trump administration Requiring federal agencies to concurrently review the different authorizations and permits for a project, and limiting NEPA review to two years for major projects and one year for smaller projects Creating loopholes for certain projects to avoid NEPA review altogether Establishing an avenue for the Secretary of Energy to make a determination whether an energy project is in the national interest, as opposed to the Secretary of State. These measures would put a great deal of strain on federal agencies and courts, and possibly force these institutions to take information presented by the companies requesting permits at face value instead of having the ability to do their own due diligence.  Appalachia, and all other sacrifice zones at risk due to this potential legislation, refuse to be sacrificed for political purposes. We must protect the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Clean Water Act (CWA), tribal sovereignty and frontline communities having a say.  Clean Water for NC joined with 650 groups in a letter to reject Machin’s side deal which fast tracks MVP and limits important environmental protections for energy projects.  Ways YOU can take action: Sign this petition opposing this side deal: Appalachian Voices Petition Send a letter to your representative:  https://tinyurl.com/blockthedeal Attend the September 8th Rally!


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  • Appalachia Knows There’s a Climate Crisis. Does President Biden?

    By: Russell Chisholm, Common Dreams April 5, 2022 As an Army veteran who served in Desert Storm and a frontline organizer in the fight to stop the Mountain Valley Pipeline, I am certain that a transition to renewable energy is what our world needs right now. We can’t keep watching as fossil fueled wars displace and kill thousands of people around the world, from Ukraine to Iraq. Not only are these wars inhumane; they threaten the possibility of a livable future for everyone on this planet. They underscore the need to stop projects like MVP and transition to renewable energy. In the past few weeks, we have witnessed the fossil fuel industry and its political allies spread lies about the impact of fracked gas and Liquid Natural Gas (LNG). Industry cronies have been baselessly declaring that completing the MVP will help our allies in Ukraine. The industry is taking advantage of a brutal war to put profit over people. But this profiteering does nothing to change our stance that the MVP and any new fossil fuel infrastructure should not be built. Here in Appalachia, we know that we can’t afford to move backward on climate progress. Unfortunately, the Biden administration is not acting in alignment with people on the frontlines of the climate crisis and environmental justice—the very communities it has claimed to put first. This month, the administration announced it will increase US liquid natural gas (LNG) exports to Europe to alleviate their dependence on Russian oil and gas. This is a massive concern for the future of climate action because building new fossil fuel infrastructure could result in the US relying on gas for longer—despite widespread certainty that all countries should be phasing off fossil fuels, including in the newest IPCC report, published Monday. Here in Appalachia, we know that we can’t afford to move backward on climate progress. Stopping the MVP isn’t about completion numbers anymore. It’s not even about permits. We are in the midst of a climate emergency, and that means this project can never be put into service. In order to ensure this happens, we need to see bold action from President Biden. There are several ways he can get back on track and help us stop the MVP. Biden could use executive action to act boldly to stop the expansion of fossil fuels and jumpstart a renewable energy transition without having to go through Congress. If Biden issued an executive order invoking the National Emergencies Act to declare a climate emergency, he could have the power to direct agencies to review their remaining permits through the climate lens, which might result in favorable decisions toward stopping MVP. The MVP is a climate disaster; it would result in the equivalent of emissions from 23 average U.S. coal plants, or over 19 million passenger vehicles annually. The pipeline also increases the risk of methane emissions, which is a greenhouse gas multitudes more potent than carbon dioxide. Stanford University recently found that methane leaking from US oil and gas infrastructure and production areas is several times greater than federal government estimates. If Biden declared a climate emergency, there would be no possible justification for methane-spewing projects like the MVP. Declaring a national emergency isn’t the only solution to the climate crisis, but it could create momentum for more bold climate action and help mobilize funding. It could also increase public pressure on unnecessary projects like the MVP. Another mechanism the Biden administration could use is the Defense Protection Act. That it is currently drafting an executive order invoking the Act to help electric vehicle producers access key minerals for the technology to store energy signals that the administration is open to using executive authority for environmental actions. Biden could also invoke the Defense Production Act to help domestic industries accelerate the production of renewable technology that could drive down costs. Some federal agencies have attempted to make progress on climate. Recently, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued policy statements saying it will consider greenhouse gas emissions and environmental justice impacts when assessing fracked gas infrastructure. But the fossil fuel industry and the politicians they bankroll pitched “a fit because they’re worried FERC’s modest proposed policy changes might mean they no longer have free rein to build as many polluting pipelines as they want”, as Kelly Sheehan at the Sierra Club put it. During FERC’s March meeting, the agency hit pause on implementing the policy changes, despite clear direction from courts that FERC can’t continue to ignore climate and environmental justice impacts when assessing projects. If Biden declared a climate emergency, there would be no possible justification for methane-spewing projects like the MVP. Agencies, states, rural communities, and cities need clear and decisive federal leadership in order to effectively address the climate crisis. These entities have repeatedly shown interest in and pursued such action, but they continue to be impeded by the greedy fossil fuel industry. Biden says that he is for environmental justice and workers’ rights. Yet his actions put vulnerable communities like those in Appalachia in danger of being left behind with stranded assets and new polluting infrastructure in a just transition to clean, renewable energy. If he is to be the Climate President he says he is, Biden must also direct adequate and equitable funding for workers who are putting the transition into action and include them in federal policy. I served in Desert Storm. Now I’ve devoted my life to protecting my community’s land and water from the threat of unnecessary fossil fuel expansion. It’s time to turn away from fossil fuels and kickstart a just transition to a renewable and clean energy future. It’s time to declare a climate emergency and ban fossil fuel leasing on federal lands and waters. Here in Appalachia, we’re ready. Are you, President Biden? Read the article on Common Dreams


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  • Organizing across state lines to stop a pipeline

    By: Ray Levy Uyeda, Yes Magazine March 24, 2022 Emily Sutton loves the Haw River, with its boulders and whitewater, perfect for rafting. The river’s 110 miles flow through rural North Carolina, touching six counties in the state. But the Haw, which Sutton advocates for as its “riverkeeper” with the Haw River Assembly, is also the backdrop of an ongoing battle against a proposed pipeline, which threatens the health of the river and those who enjoy it. Plans for the Mountain Valley pipeline were first announced in April 2018. The proposed pipeline would transport fracked gas 300 miles from West Virginia to a compressor site in southern Virginia, and then another 70 miles into northern North Carolina. This last section is called the Mountain Valley Southgate Extension, and it goes through the state to allow a major stakeholder that already services nearly 30% of counties to expand its market. It is this section of the pipeline that would decimate the Haw River. The pipeline was originally supposed to be completed in less than a year and cost financial partners $3.5 billion. But four years of coordinated cross-state grassroots resistance to the pipeline’s construction has thus far prevented the Mountain Valley pipeline corporation from laying even an inch of pipeline in North Carolina soil. New county, city, and state laws have a far reach in preventing pipelines that are slated to start in one state and end in another, as seen with a Virginia state law that impacts the North Carolina section of the pipeline. With the project over budget and lacking necessary permits, one financial backer of the Mountain Valley pipeline corporation says it’s reconsidering its 31% investment in the now-$6.2 billion pipeline. The corporation is also facing an $800 million impairment charge—a financial term to describe when the value of a good or service drops below the cost to produce it. “It was determined that the continued legal and regulatory challenges have resulted in a very low probability of pipeline completion,” the funder said in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing. That, along with the additional legal and financial hurdles the pipeline now has to overcome, is likely causing other investors to see the project as more of a financial risk, forcing them to reconsider their own stake. And this cross-state collaboration is only one of many where people power is waging a concerted, and increasingly successful, campaign against fossil fuel corporations and the harmful extraction they promise. Pipeline corporations often rely on silence and intimidation—social ills that splice communities and convince neighbors of their isolation from each other. But organizers in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Nebraska are proving that building collective community power can successfully counter Big Oil’s moneyed interests. Given that oil extraction in the U.S. increased during the pandemic and that federal officials continue to subsidize fossil fuels despite scientific warnings to stop their sale and combustion, it’s clear to organizers that grassroots strategies are critical to fighting pipelines. “When a pipeline is proposed, [those impacted] either don’t know about it until it’s too late, or they don’t have the access to the information or time to dedicate to showing up to all of these meetings and giving comments,” Sutton says. When it came to the pipeline threatening the Haw River, though, she says that wasn’t the case: “We really gave the power to the people who are impacted.” How to stop a pipeline In many ways, pipeline fighting is a battle between narratives—one of money versus people power—and also one of priorities—economic benefit in the short term versus generations of climate disaster. To understand the impending defeat of Southgate, it’s important to realize that wins against pipelines don’t occur in a vacuum; generational Appalachians in West Virginia have organized in tandem with water defenders and protectors in North Carolina. Organizers from different communities, even in different states, are stronger working together when they have a shared aim. There’s a blueprint, organizers say, of what to do when a pipeline threatens already vulnerable communities. The first step is to educate neighbors and those who care about the land. The second is to make the building process as legally untenable as possible by advocating for the passage of new city and county laws, demonstrating a pipeline’s fallibility to state environmental agencies. “It’s hard to fight against major corporations when you don’t have money,” says Crystal Cavaliere, a member of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation. Cavaliere lives in Mebane, North Carolina, and is one of the main leaders working on the Southgate resistance efforts. She says organizers and impacted residents are made to feel like if they don’t have money, they don’t have power. Cavaliere’s work is to disprove that hypothesis. There are certainly immediate risks to the river’s ecosystem: rerouting creeks with pipe, sediment pollution from construction, and gas leaks due to breakages in the line. But there’s even more at stake. Within the Haw’s watershed, the Southgate Extension would threaten 207 streams, three ponds, and 9 acres of wetlands, as well as more than 600,000 square feet surrounding a nearby watershed, according to the state Department of Environmental Quality. And these threaten the river’s future as well as its past. The word haw means “river” in the language of the Sissipahaw, one of the Indigenous tribes that called the region home. “This river was the lifeblood for entire civilizations,” says Sutton, with the Haw River Assembly, the nonprofit dedicated to advocacy and protection of its watershed. English settler-colonizers committed genocide against the Sissipahaw peoples; the river and its name remain a memory of their existence. The river was also a site of the underground railroad during the period of legal enslavement of African Americans in the United States, according to the Assembly. Even today, the Haw “still continues to be this connecting source from people in the triad, in Greensboro, all the way down to Jordan Lake and the triangle in North Carolina,” Sutton says. Fighting for all people, and their river In late 2021, three years into the battle against the Mountain Valley Southgate Extension, organizers in North Carolina were beginning to lose hope. The state permitting process looked like it was going to allow the beginning stages of pipeline construction, portending an uphill climb of legal challenges for defenders of the Haw River. But then, in the first week of December, organizers pushed the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board to deny the permit required to build a pipeline compressor station, citing a 2020 Virginia environmental justice law and the potential that the compressor station would contribute to ongoing environmental injustices faced by Black and Brown residents living near the site. The compressor is a key element connecting the mainline of the Mountain Valley pipeline to the extension through North Carolina. This forced the company to start the permitting process all over again and allowed organizers more time to rally impacted residents and lobby public officials. A month later, in a case brought by the Sierra Club, Appalachian Voices, and other environmental organizations, a federal appeals court overturned permits previously issued by two agencies, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, that would have allowed the mainline to devastate two species of endangered fish—the Roanoke logperch and candy darter—that live in the Jefferson National Forest, which straddles the West Virginia–Virginia border. Moreover, officials in North Carolina have twice denied a necessary Water Quality Certification permit, mandated by the Clean Water Act, to the pipeline company. And as long as the mainline isn’t built, there can be no Southgate Extension. “Southgate doesn’t have anything to stand on in North Carolina,” Sutton says. But these wins aren’t the product of state and federal agencies deciding to do the right thing, she says. They’re consequences of years of relationship building and storytelling by communities most likely to bear the brunt of pipeline construction and its ongoing devastation in the form of gas leaks, methane pollution, and water contamination—the critical first step in the blueprint of pipeline resistance. “You have to stand up, you have to say no, and you got to start telling these people how you feel,” Cavaliere says. By “these people,” she means city and county officials, representatives from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and state agencies and boards tasked with evaluating permits filed by the construction company. Along with other organizations fighting the extension’s construction, Cavaliere coached landowners and other impacted residents in Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina to tell their personal stories in the few minutes allotted for public comment at meetings held by regulatory agencies and commissions charged with handing out permits. Cavaliere says she’s working with tribal leaders and nations that steward land in what’s known as South Carolina to prevent any future plans for pipeline construction. “We use our traditional Indigenous values when we’re organizing, so it is kind of slow,” Cavaliere says. “It’s just really about gaining people’s trust.” Learning from successful decades-long battles While fighting his own pipeline battle in Memphis, Tennessee, organizer Justin J. Pearson spent time in North Carolina with Cavaliere to swap strategies and speak at actions she had organized. From October 2020 through December 2021, Pearson led a grassroots resistance against the construction of the Byhalia Connection pipeline, which would have ravaged the majority-Black neighborhood of East Memphis. The proposed 49-mile pipeline was funded by a subsidiary of Valero and Plains All American Pipeline, billion-dollar corporations with vast legal and economic resources. Pearson’s efforts focused on the second part of the pipeline resistance blueprint: passing preemptive local laws. “The only way you’re gonna get legislation passed is with people power,” Pearson says, explaining that the legislative process also serves as a means to educate constituents and policymakers who may not know the many threats pipelines pose. “It isn’t enough to get things done; you have to have folks behind it and supportive of it to show politicians that it matters.” The 2021 passage of legislation protecting drinking water and residents’ homes affirmed that the pipeline’s construction company and financial backers would need the consent and participation of the people of Memphis if they wanted to build. In response, community members helped pass a countywide setback ordinance and two citywide ordinances—one instituting a setback and another protecting the Memphis Sand Aquifer. In July 2021, the company announced that it was pulling plans for the pipeline, proving Pearson’s community campaign against Byhalia a success. During this time, the Biden administration also revoked the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, indicating to Pearson that his ultimate goal might just be attainable after all: “We’re collectively fighting for a future … for people, especially Black, Indigenous, people of color—people who this society has excluded intentionally. We are changing that narrative in the course of history about whose lives are deemed worthy and worth protecting,” Pearson says. It also helped that Jane Kleeb, one of the faces of the Keystone resistance, called Pearson up early in his resistance work to see how she could support his efforts. Kleeb says she provided some resources, but more importantly, she connected him to a whole community of pipeline fighters—organizers across states who share stories and swap strategies on what Kleeb refers to as “pipeline-fighter calls.” For nearly a decade, Kleeb fought Keystone by building relationships between groups who, on the surface, might appear to have little in common, like White ranchers and Native peoples. Kleeb learned that pipeline companies follow their own playbook, starting with predatorily approaching landowners and coercing them to sign easement agreements that allow the companies access to their land for drilling or pipeline construction. For instance, companies may tell landowners that all of their neighbors have signed easement agreements and that they’re the last to do so (when in reality no one else has), Kleeb explains, in an attempt to isolate, intimidate, and pressure the landowner to comply. “The only thing that stops these pipelines is if you lock up the land,” Kleeb says. Today, the organization built out from the fight against Keystone XL, Bold Alliance, mobilizes communities to fight pipelines in multiple ways, particularly by creating easement action teams. In these teams, groups of landowners are represented by Bold Alliance’s lawyers, who ensure pipeline companies won’t approach or speak to the landowners without legal representation. “It kind of takes that power that the pipeline companies had of preying on landowners away, and puts some power back into the hands of landowners,” Kleeb says. Not every pipeline battle leads to a win, Pearson says, nodding to the now-operational section of a tar sands pipeline known as Line 3, which runs through Native land in northern Minnesota. A more local risk is a bill being fast-tracked through the Tennessee state legislature aimed at usurping local control from cities that try to prevent fossil fuel companies from operationalizing. If passed, the legislation would become effective this summer, undoing the work Pearson and others organized so hard for. Yet each successive fight bears lessons, and that’s important, he says. “Even when we lose some of our fights … there’s something that has happened in our awareness and our attention and our intention and our ability to still fight on,” Pearson says. “The next fight won’t start at the same starting place; it’ll be a little further. The people who are fighting that fight will be a little more ready for the next one.” Read the article on Yes Magazine


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