This pipeline was snarled in court. Then Congress stepped in.
| BENT MOUNTAIN, Va.
“I just don’t know what I’m going to do when the bulldozers come back,” says Mary Beth Coffey, tears welling in her eyes, as they do whenever she talks about the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
Ms. Coffey and her husband Bruce first heard about the 303-mile natural gas pipeline in 2014, when they got a letter informing them the project would go directly through their rural Virginia property. Since then, they and others have been trying to halt the construction – with some success.
Why We Wrote This
Congress has fast-tracked energy projects before – but rarely ones helmed by private companies, like the Mountain Valley Pipeline. The debate has pitted concerns about energy independence against the environment and eminent domain.
But in coming weeks, it will likely resume. Because tucked into the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 – the legislation Congress passed to raise the debt ceiling – was a provision requiring the “timely completion” of the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
It was an unexpected twist in a nearly decadelong fight pitting concerns about energy independence and jobs against the environment and eminent domain. Proponents say red tape and litigation are making it nearly impossible to tap new domestic energy sources – pointing to the cancellation of two larger projects, the Keystone XL and Atlantic Coast pipelines.
Opponents say such projects are irresponsible in an age of climate change, and that powerful interests are trampling the concerns of everyday citizens. Despite the long odds, they say they’re not backing down.
“Just come look,” says Mary Beth Coffey, pushing her seat back from the dining room table and dropping her fork on her plate, a bite of pork still in its prongs. She’s out the back door in seconds, pointing to the view she’s come to know so well over the past three decades. Tall grasses sway in the forefront as the summer’s orchestra of frogs, bugs, and birds crescendos. The cerulean Blue Ridge Mountains rise in the distance.
“I just don’t know what I’m going to do when the bulldozers come back,” says Ms. Coffey, tears welling in her eyes, as they do almost every time she talks about the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
Ms. Coffey and her husband Bruce first heard about the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) – a controversial 303-mile natural gas pipeline running from northern West Virginia through southern Virginia – in 2014, when they got a letter in their mailbox informing them that the project would go directly through their property. Since then the Coffeys, along with a coalition of neighbors, other landowners, and interstate strangers, have been trying to halt the pipeline’s construction through some of Virginia’s poorest, most rural areas.
Why We Wrote This
Congress has fast-tracked energy projects before – but rarely ones helmed by private companies, like the Mountain Valley Pipeline. The debate has pitted concerns about energy independence against the environment and eminent domain.
And they’ve been fairly successful – until now.
The pipeline, which was originally supposed to be completed by the end of 2018, is years behind schedule and more than $3 billion over budget. Sections remain unconnected, held up by litigation. The mountain in the center of Ms. Coffey’s vista has a pale green line down its center where, after being razed in 2018, new vegetation has started to grow back.
But in the coming weeks, construction around the Coffeys’ home will likely resume. That’s because tucked into the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 – the legislation Congress passed earlier this month to raise the debt ceiling – was a provision requiring the “timely completion” of the pipeline, which it declared in “the national interest.” The inclusion was widely seen as a sop to West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat and frequent swing voter, who has been trying for years to get the pipeline built.
It was an unexpected twist in a nearly decadelong fight pitting longstanding arguments about energy independence and jobs against environmental concerns and questions of eminent domain. Pipeline proponents say red tape and endless litigation are making it nearly impossible to tap new domestic energy sources – pointing to the cancellation of two larger projects, the Keystone XL and Atlantic Coast pipelines. To many, the MVP seemed like it was heading for a similar fate before Congress stepped in and fast-tracked the project along with broader permitting reforms.
“It’s the only thing that can put that much energy in the market that quickly,” Senator Manchin tells the Monitor, explaining why the MVP, which he and other proponents say is roughly 94% complete, was included in the debt deal.
Opponents say that such fossil fuel projects are irresponsible in an age of climate change and that powerful interests are trampling the concerns of everyday citizens, some of whom are fighting to protect the only asset they have – their land. Despite the long odds, they say they’re not backing down. Just days after the debt bill was signed, hundreds gathered outside the White House to protest.
“This has always been a region where production and destruction were the main business. First coal, now gas,” says Amy Nelson, a retired history professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, holding a hand-painted cardboard sign that reads: “We are Appalachia #NoMoreSacrificeZones.”
“Giving up is not an option,” says Ms. Nelson. “I will always stand with my community.”
The pipeline resistance
For Maury Johnson, this month’s White House protest marked his 10th visit to Washington in less than a year. One of the de facto leaders of the “pipeline resistance,” the West Virginian has spent days at a time in the nation’s capital, where hotels aren’t exactly cheap. But Mr. Johnson recently came into some money when the MVP paid him an undisclosed amount to cross his property. With a certificate from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission comes the right of eminent domain – meaning that landowners like Mr. Johnson must settle or be sued.
“I’m using their own money to fight them,” he says with a chuckle, walking around the hulking pipes that have been lying in his field for years, waiting to be put in the ground.
Mr. Johnson formed the Mountain Valley Watch with others in 2018 to monitor the MVP’s construction and report violations. Most pipeline projects wind up with around 50 to 75 violations, he says. But the MVP in West Virginia alone has garnered at least 600 reports – 240 sent in by Mr. Johnson himself.
“Our work is the reason they lost their permits,” he says proudly as he drives around Monroe County, pointing out different mountains and the homes of new friends who have joined his fight.
Snaking through the Virginias, the pipeline’s path is dotted with felled trees and little flags denoting water sources. Here and there, tall grasses grow between piles of pipes-in-waiting, where the project has been put on hold.
To build an interstate pipeline, or expand an existing one, energy companies must apply for a permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, with approval contingent on a host of other permits being granted from other agencies. The joint venture behind the MVP, for example, needed permission from the Army Corps of Engineers to cross more than 1,000 streams and wetlands; permission from the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to cross the Jefferson National Forest; and Endangered Species Act approvals from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. By early 2018, the MVP had secured the regulatory commission’s “Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity” and the subsequent necessary permits from all of these other agencies.
Companies are legally allowed to start construction at that point, as the MVP did in early 2018, but all the permits may still be subject to litigation. In the MVP’s case, environmental lawyers successfully argued that federal agencies didn’t do their due diligence in issuing the approvals – all three of which were overturned in court, resulting in expensive work delays.
“We recognize that this decision will further delay the completion of an already mostly finished pipeline, but the Endangered Species Act’s directive to federal agencies could not be clearer: ‘halt and reverse the trend toward species extinction, whatever the cost,’” Judge James Andrew Wynn wrote last year in the 4th Circuit’s opinion that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had erred in its assessment of the MVP’s risks to the candy darter fish.
Pipeline opponents argue not only that the MVP is environmentally harmful, but also that its path – which winds through numerous waterways and along some of the steepest slopes in Appalachia – isn’t suitable for this kind of project.
But while they remain hopeful they’ll be able to stop the bulldozers again, that path appears increasingly narrow. Because with the debt deal, Congress not only approved all existing permits and mandated that final stream-crossing permits be issued within 21 days – making the deadline this coming Saturday – but also dictated that “no court shall have jurisdiction to review any action” by federal or state agencies going forward.
“They stomped the Constitution into the ground,” says Aretta Dupre, whose home in Wayside, West Virginia, is adjacent to the pipeline. “They didn’t just hurt West Virginia doing this; they hurt our nation. They just created a monster.”
Mountain Valley Pipeline, a group of several energy companies, declined to comment.
Congress has taken unilateral action to circumvent the courts on infrastructure projects before. In the case of Tennessee’s Tellico Dam, some four decades ago, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of environmental groups who argued the dam would violate the Endangered Species Act, Congress passed a law exempting the dam from the act.
But the dam was a federal project run by the Tennessee Valley Authority. Giving privately owned companies permits without any chance of judicial review is largely unprecedented, say MVP opponents.
“It’s a horrible precedent,” Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia tells the Monitor. “Congress shouldn’t be in the permitting business. We assigned this to regulatory agencies in the 1930s because a) it should be done by a body with expertise, and b) bluntly, it should be [ensured that] campaign contributions can’t buy them off.”
Ahead of the Senate’s debt ceiling vote, Senator Kaine proposed an amendment to remove the MVP provision from the bill. But with the clock ticking and national default on the horizon, Mr. Kaine’s amendment, along with every other amendment introduced, failed.
The Manchin factor
Senator Manchin, a moderate Democrat from a deep-red state, has played an outsize role in this narrowly divided Senate, and the debt deal was no different. The MVP has been a longtime priority of his, and he reportedly only agreed to vote for the Inflation Reduction Act last August, with its many climate-related provisions that were viewed unfavorably in West Virginia, in exchange for permitting reforms and MVP support.
“I think the White House felt like Senator Manchin cast a tough vote on the Inflation Reduction Act – which he did, thank goodness – and I think they felt like because he did that, we should do this,” says Mr. Kaine. “But there would have been ways to make permitting work better, including work better for the MVP, without doing this sweetheart deal for one project.”
Mr. Manchin’s support for the MVP strikes many observers as an effort to win over Republicans back home and improve his chances in a race where, if he decides to run for reelection, he’ll likely face popular GOP Gov. Jim Justice. In that sense, his interests very much align with the Biden administration’s – since he is widely seen as the only Democrat in West Virginia with even a chance of holding that seat. The Cook Political Report, an independent newsletter, currently rates the seat a “toss-up.”
There’s little question that the MVP is viewed more favorably among Republicans than Democrats.
“There are many benefits: increased tax revenue, energy independence,” says Trey Ewing, vice chair of the Greenbrier County Republican Party in West Virginia. “I personally support it, and I believe most local conservatives do as well.”
But Mr. Ewing also predicts the pipeline will have little impact on Mr. Manchin’s reelection prospects, saying flatly that he believes the Democrat doesn’t have “any chance” of winning statewide again.
Many locals living near the pipeline’s path tell the Monitor they don’t know anything about it or don’t have an opinion – reflecting the area’s general political apathy.
“I don’t have a dog in this fight,” says a farmer at his Boones Mill, Virginia, farm stand, who lives on the other side of the mountain from the pipeline and requested anonymity because he didn’t want to alienate customers.
And in his effort to win over conservative voters, the senator may have alienated some of his more left-leaning supporters. Mr. Johnson, the founder of the pipeline protest group, volunteered for Mr. Manchin’s last campaign but now says he plans to “work against him” in 2024.
“If they can sacrifice me and my community,” he told the crowd of protestors gathered in front of the White House this month, “they’re coming for you next.”
Staff writer Christa Case Bryant contributed to this report.
