Image: Adobe Stock
Fifty Democratic state lawmakers have asked FERC — the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — to require owners of MVP Southgate to reapply for certification for a natural gas pipeline that would traverse through parts of Rockingham County. If FERC agrees, Equitrans Midstream would have to begin the authorization process anew, including holding public hearings and issuing another environmental impact statement that could further delay the project.
In the letter dated Feb. 9, the lawmakers reason that Equitrans Midstream’s proposal in December for a new, shortened route entering Rockingham County from Virginia, “goes beyond a set of modest changes” to the existing certification. Although the route will no longer travel through Alamance County as originally proposed, the pipeline would be larger in diameter and able to carry more natural gas. The original pipeline was to carry 300,000 dekatherms of natural gas per day; the larger pipeline would allow the transport of nearly twice that much, 550,000 dekatherms.
And instead of just serving Dominion Energy, the pipeline could also supply natural gas to Duke Energy, according to the latter utility’s recent filings with the state Utilities Commission. Duke plans to build a new natural gas plant near Roxboro, in Person County.
The revised project “is a new pipeline, one with a different purpose and different environmental impacts, including an increased contribution to the climate crisis,” the letter from lawmakers reads.
The lawmakers’ letter echoes communication submitted to FERC by several environmental advocacy groups, including the Sierra Club and Appalachian Voices. U.S. Reps. Kathy Manning and Valerie Foushee, both Democrats, sent a separate letter to FERC arguing the same points.
Equitrans Midstream rebutted the pipeline opponents’ points, writing to FERC that by amending its proposal, the company “does not start at square one.” The company denied that it is abandoning the Southgate project, nor allowing it to go dormant. The project update is “proof that Mountain Valley continues to make a good faith effort to pursue” it, the company wrote.
MVP Southgate is an extension of the embattled MVP main pipeline, which would run from a fracked gas operation in West Virginia through environmentally sensitive and precarious terrain in Virginia. The main line is more than five years behind schedule because of several successful legal challenges by environmental advocates and permit denials by Virginia environmental officials. As originally proposed in 2020, MVP Southgate was to traverse more than 70 miles, starting from Pittsylvania County, Virginia, then entering North Carolina near Eden, in Rockingham County. From there, the route would have traveled southeast through Alamance County, ending near Haw River.
Now the pipeline will travel just 31 miles and end in Rockingham County. There, the routing will also likely change, according to a letter from Equitrans Midstream to federal regulators. However, landowners along the original route are still vulnerable to Equitrans Midstream’s powers of eminent domain to take part of their property for the project, as those claims have not yet been dropped.
Equitrans Midstream has said that the environmental impact of the new route would be less because it would cross fewer waterways. However, the company has yet to release a map of the revised route, and until then the claim can’t be corroborated.
The post State, federal lawmakers ask FERC to require MVP Southgate to start over its certification for natural gas pipeline appeared first on NC Newsline.