Tell FERC: Don't let Mountain Valley Pipeline rewrite the rules!
Kimberly D. Bose, Secretary, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
Mountain Valley Pipeline has filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to amend its Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity, allowing the company to skirt existing rules and change the way it will cross streams and wetlands for over 120 locations, and 181 stream and wetland crossings along the 300-mile West Virginia and Virginia route.
Currently, MVP is unable to perform open water trench crossings as originally planned because a federal court “stayed” the company's one-size-fits-all Clean Water Act permit. MVP is in the process of withdrawing that permit and asking for new state level individualized crossing permits. Yet MVP wants to move forward to try and bore underneath waters instead, often in unsuitable conditions on steep slopes.
Help us protect our mountains, streams and communities. Tell FERC to deny MVP’s amendment request!
Sponsored by
To:
Kimberly D. Bose, Secretary, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
From:
[Your Name]
Subject: Docket Number - CP21-57-000 Deny MVP's request to amend Certificate
Dear Secretary Bose,
Appalachian Voices and our supporters, whose signatures can be found below, respectfully request that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission deny the Mountain Valley Pipeline’s request to amend their Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity. There has been no supplemental environmental impact statement for the requested changes, and MVP’s request appears to be an attempt to circumvent restrictions resulting from the loss of water crossing permits, and to interfere with their own application for state-level permits.
Expanding upon their 2020 amendment request, which the Commission did not approve, MVP applies the same approach: altering plans at will, mid-construction, requesting hundreds of variances from approved permit conditions and pursuing conflicting, simultaneous paths to circumvent missing water protection permits. The company’s construction plan—and subsequent environmental impacts—continue to move further from the original, approved certificate. This newest Certificate Amendment is akin to a variance request for the entire route.
Without proper analysis, the public cannot know the severity of impacts to soil, steep slopes, streams and wetlands that would be caused by close to two hundred conventional borings. The company should not receive a blank check to arbitrarily alter construction practices along almost the entire route.
Waterways in steep terrain and with karst geology are not suitable locations for boring, and longer crossings bring additional risk. Multiple requests by Intervenors for a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement in response to granted variances have gone unanswered by the Commission in the original Docket CP16-10. As construction potentially proceeds, the plans and execution of these plans bear less and less resemblance to what was reviewed and approved by the Commission in 2017 and used to inform other Federal and State agency decisions.
We respectfully ask that the request to amend the certificate be denied. If the FERC is seriously considering this amendment, we request that the Commission undertake a full Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement that thoroughly addresses impacts from boring and is accompanied by a 90-day public comment period.
Thank you for consideration of our comments and any additional personal comments our supporters have submitted.
Sincerely,