Mountain Valley Pipeline faces more erosion issues - Roanoke Times

Mountain Valley Pipeline faces more erosion issues

NEWPORT — Not far from where Sinking Creek winds through this historic village and passes under a covered bridge, muddy water flowed up from the ground Wednesday in what is normally a clear-running natural spring.

About a half mile away, construction crews worked on steep slopes to build a natural gas pipeline that descends into the community, burrows under Blue Grass Trail (Virginia 42) and the adjacent Greenbrier Branch, and makes its way back up a mountainside.
The Mountain Valley Pipeline as seen under construction in Newport on Feb. 5.

Did muddy runoff from work on the Mountain Valley Pipeline wind up in the natural spring?

Direct answers were not available from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality or Mountain Valley. But what’s happening at Sinking Creek is just the latest in a series of problems that have long plagued the controversial project, opponents say.

A letter from 29 community and statewide organizations asks DEQ to stop work on the pipeline.

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“Despite the fact that MVP has been allowed to rip and blast through the countryside and our waters for extended periods since early 2018, it has yet to correct its plans and its behavior in a way that avoids the very same kind of violations first seen six years ago,” states a letter sent Thursday to DEQ Director Michael Rolband.

In the past, DEQ has cited the company for violations of erosion and sediment control regulations, which sometimes allowed muddy runoff to flow directly from construction sites onto nearby private property and into streams.

The situation at Sinking Creek appears to be different.

Karst topography in the area — sinkholes, caves and caverns caused by the dissolving of limestone and other rock over time — may have created a channel that allowed sediment-laden water to travel a longer distance underground before it surfaced in the natural spring, which feeds into Sinking Creek.

Donna Pitt of Preserve Giles County watched the orange-brown water flow past her as she stood next to the spring Wednesday afternoon. What she saw, Pitt said, was exactly what pipeline opponents have warned about for years in comments to regulatory agencies.
Muddy water flows from a spring at the intersection of Blue Grass Trail (Virginia 42) and Clover Hollow Road (Virginia 601) in Newport on Feb. 5.

“We knew that it was going to be a disaster of some kind, somewhere,” Pitt said. “And the fact that it is in Sinking Creek, the community that has fought Mountain Valley from the beginning, just infuriates me.”

Drinking water has been contaminated for at least two homes that rely on wells or springs, she said. And plumes of sediment were visible in the creek as far as three miles downstream from the contaminated spring.

“I have lived in this community my entire life and am hard-pressed to recall a time seeing this much mud in the stream,” Perry Martin, a member of the Giles County Board of Supervisors, wrote in a recent email to DEQ.
Muddy water flows into Sinking Creek from a spring at the intersection of Clover Hollow Road (Virginia 601) and Blue Grass Trail (Virginia 42) in Newport on Feb. 5.

The Roanoke Times submitted questions to DEQ about the situation at Sinking Creek on Tuesday. Additional inquiries about the request for a stop work order were emailed to the agency’s spokeswoman on Friday.

In a response Saturday morning, Irinia Calos wrote in an email that Mountain Valley “is working with the karst expert at the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation and its karst consultants regarding mitigation and minimization options. Karst specialists and inspectors continue investigating this issue.”

DEQ did not respond to questions about the stop-work request.

Although a spokeswoman for Mountain Valley did not confirm that the sediment came from pipeline work some distance away, she acknowledged there was a problem.

Mountain Valley is “actively addressing the situation in an effort to protect the surrounding resources and alleviate community concerns,” Natalie Cox wrote in an email.

On Wednesday, workers at the scene were pumping water from the spring, before it reached the creek, and hauling it away in tanker trucks. On Friday, Pitt said, they had placed a floating dam in Sinking Creek in an effort to catch the sediment before it was carried downstream.
Muddy spring water at the intersection of Blue Grass Trail (Virginia 42) and Clover Hollow Road (Virginia 601) in the Giles County village of Newport on Feb. 5.

Cox did not provide a detailed answer to questions about the cleanup efforts.

But in response to the call for a stop-work order, she wrote: “MVP project opponents continue to promote factual inaccuracies in support of their agenda, which includes a primary objective to stop MVP and other linear infrastructure.”

Construction of the buried pipeline has undergone “an unprecedented level of scrutiny” from DEQ and other regulatory agencies, Cox wrote.

Erosion control devices — temporary measures intended to curb the flow of storm water while construction is underway — can be overwhelmed by heavy rains.

“During January 2024, MVP’s six Virginia counties received between 4.2 and 6.8 inches of rain, which was well above the 20-year average for these counties,” Cox wrote. “As has always been the case, completing construction and fully restoring the project’s right-of-way remains the best method of permanent environmental protection.”

Long delayed by legal challenges filed by environmental groups, the project was fast-tracked by Congress last year. Mountain Valley says it hopes to have the pipeline in service by late March, providing needed natural gas to East Coast markets.

Over the past six years, opponents have repeatedly asked DEQ to stop work on the pipeline until Mountain Valley can demonstrate compliance with state environmental standards. There has been just one such order, in the summer of 2019, on a small stretch of the 303-mile pipeline in Montgomery County.

Problems then paled in comparison to what’s happening now, according to David Sligh, conservation director of Wild Virginia.

The state’s inaction is “part of the pattern that has been set throughout the period when this has been under construction, where DEQ has been timid about saying there are problems,” Sligh said.

“It’s an abdication of their duty.”

Last week’s request for a stop-work order was made by groups that include Wild Virginia, the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights coalition, Preserve Giles County, the Virginia League of Conservation Voters, and the Sierra Club’s New River Valley Group.

The 17-page letter included detailed descriptions of cases in which sediment infiltrated Sinking Creek, the Bottom Creek watershed on Bent Mountain and other streams and wetland along the pipeline’s route, which runs from northern West Virginia, through Southwest Virginia, to connect with an existing pipeline near the North Carolina line.

“The reality of the effects on water bodies, which DEQ personnel seem all too willing to ignore or dismiss, must not be discounted,” the letter stated.

In addition to inspections by DEQ, monitoring is conducted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

A review of weekly reports from Dec. 31 through Feb. 3 filed with FERC shows at least 32 cases where sediment was washed off the pipeline right-of-way, sometimes into streams and wetlands.

“During today’s heavy rain event, turbid water undermined a compost filter sock and entered stream S-Y7,” a report from Jan. 9 stated. Streams are seldom identified by name in the environmental compliance reports.

Despite that incident and others, FERC found no cases of problem areas or non-compliance, two of the terms used to describe incidents recorded by inspectors. Instead, the federal agency handled the matters through “communication reports,” which provide documentation of meetings held to resolve the issues.

“These events and reports are all considered equally by FERC staff as part of the overall compliance record and for purposes of requiring follow-up remediation,” agency spokeswoman Celeste Miller wrote in an email.

Sedimentation — which can clog waterways, impede wildlife and aquatic vegetation, contribute to flooding and increase the cost of treating drinking water — is listed by the Environmental Protection Agency as a common form of water pollution.

Existing problems in Southwest Virginia will not be addressed, the letter requesting a stop-work order said, “if MVP is allowed to rush forward with construction at its current breakneck pace.”

Laurence Hammack (540) 981-3239

laurence.hammack@roanoke.com