Letter to the Editor,
MVP will not end by one single action but by 1,000 cuts. All along, the main battle for and against MVP has been about timing – a cliffhanger. For MVP – privileged beyond any shred of justice – has known all along that its future depended on fast-tracking its unlawful completion ahead of effective federal court scrutiny and whose disadvantage for opponents was the years it takes to work through legal challenges while MVP was allowed to construct.
At every public hearing, MVP officials repeated its percentage progress of completion. MVP’s “un-statable” subtext was: “You permitted us, and we are so far completed – just grandfather us in! Ignore the law and citizens’ rights to justice, safety, historical preservation clean water and peaceful communities.”
Opposing MVP from when it was merely a “klepto-maniacal twinkle” in EQT’s eye (now a parent-partner who has abandoned its losing monster MVP baby) was POWHR (Preserve Our Water, Heritage and Rights) – a coalition of MVP-crossed SWVA county “Preserve” groups. POWHR’s first accomplishment was a 2015 Key Log economic impact study of out-of-state MVP LLC’s economic damage (which underestimated the yet-to-be-determined endless economic and potential “abandonment-restoration” costs) which will now likely occupy us for decades.
Immediately following FERC’s 2017 permitting, MVP, LLC, clearcut its 125’ wide, 300-mile clearcut swath across the Virginias – usurping land before a dime was paid to traumatized landowners under the FERC-granted privilege of “tolling orders” pre-emptively transgressing the property rights, bisecting the widest intact contiguous U.S. East Coast wilderness – including Americans’ Jefferson National Forest.
Thanks to “Nutty” (protest name) for her heroic five-week aerial blockade of Pocahontas Road which prevented MVP’s entrenchment of 42” pipes across Peters Mountain! She and other tree and equipment clairvoyant blockade heroes were upheld the law while many local judges, state and federal agencies and two successive Virginia governors – McAuliffe and Northam – were on the unlawful side.
Leaders were propagandized by the fossil fuels interests-occupied Roanoke (and Virginia) Chambers of Commerce that “MVP was needed and stimulate economic development and jobs.” Leaders should always be aware of the oft-repeated, irresistible “shiny object” propaganda. The truth we now confirm was simply a scheme to advance profiteering private investors who cared nothing about how their destructive project affects locals, the stability of our mountains or endangered species that – if we know them and protect them – in turn protect us. An operational MVP is an explosive bomb undercutting our Salem I-81/US 460 major North-South thoroughfares that had to be detonated before completion.
MVP lost essential permits twice – its US Forest Service and BLM authorization for two crossings of JNF and the US Fish and Wildlife biological (endangered species) opinion. Additionally, the Army Corps of Engineers will not issue a Clean Water Act (CWA) water crossing permit (needed to cross the remaining waterways) without a valid MVP biological opinion. These two permits were already twice rejected by the Obama-appointed trio of Fourth Circuit Federal Court judges – Gregory, Thacker and Wynn. The difficulty of regaining these permits is now commensurate to the task we now face to restore MVP-crossed land – permanently harmed.
Opponents are undoing MVP’s “done deal.” We’ve been on our own. Only lately, the Biden EPA backed our rights to clean water. After years of delays to MVP’s attempt to fast-track, the courts are finally overruling the united corrupt state and federal agencies’ lawless MVP permits. Bittersweet justice is finally coming to bear on MVP but look at the sobering destruction – easily viewed from hundreds of Salem vantage points.
Thankfully, we’re dodging MVP’s worst bullets – an arbitrary 300-mile bomb planted under the Virginias’ roads – including our major Salem North-South thoroughfares, I-81, U.S. 460 and the railroad. Don’t forget MVP’s proximity to Spring Hollow Dam.
MVP must now face its investors after exploding their billions in foolhardy. Major MVP partner, NEXTERA, just took losses and seceded from this privileged, hyped, fast-tracked, lawless and fraudulent project that is the greatest threat to Salem’s security and quality of life ever.
Who will restore the land that this boondoggle destroyed? Taxpayers? Never let an LLC gamble on your future without a bond – for MVP – at least $20 billion to cover its forewarned priceless destruction of what we most love. MVP’s pipes’ steel should have built bridges – not corruption. Needed is MVP’s own acknowledgement of its impossible completion prospects – the final coup. With MVP’s commercial abandonment, we escape the unholy allied MVP-VA-FERC scheme to turn our precious, pristine outdoor playland into a sacrifice zone of constantly threatening random bomb with one-mile-wide “incineration zones” of yet undemonstrated explosive power.
The Virginia Way paved MVP’s easement that took Virginia corruption to a new level. Even a deaf or blind person could not miss MVP’s massive water destruction of every stream it crossed! Still doubling down, while other East Coast states long-ago ended ridiculous export-sized pipelines, Virginia’s DEQ was “Supporting Actor” to help MVP win the title of “Last Standing Epic East Coast Pipeline Boondoggle” by recommending to its VA Water Board on December 14, 2021 – a CWA permit that makes a mockery of our nation’s beloved 1972 law.
MVP – destroyer of everything – only offers higher heating costs to VA for private profit! Still, the Chamber supports it while VA Republicans join VA Dems (after all our Mothers-Out-Front whistleblowing on VADEQ’s corruption) to pass a law to transfer ALL permitting power to VADEQ!
Wouldn’t that reward the VADEQ perpetrator of SWVA’s economic harm? Let’s hope Delegate Joe McNamara (who originally opposed MVP on the Roanoke Co. BOS) takes note and preserves the permitting authority of VA Citizen Boards whose Air Pollution Board acted properly on not permitting MVP Southgate although the Water Board wrongly upheld VADEQ’s CWA permit for the MVP mainline.
Recognize corruption, end the “Virginia Way” – a major attack on honest, flourishing VA business that never “needed” MVP and whose attack of our Valley’s pristine outdoor theme must be rejected. Authentic leaders need to recognize these straight-on attacks and use their standings to fight back with all available tools – not neutrality and pretend actions! Local governments must insist that all construction in Roanoke River’s watershed and Bent Mountain headwaters be halted now!
– Cynthia Munley, Preserve Salem