More Than 150 MVP Water Quality Violations Revealed by Clean Water Advocates’ New Map Project

BLACKSBURG, VA - Today, Mountain Valley Watch, a volunteer organization of concerned community members monitoring construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, released its Incident Reporting Map, giving the public and decision makers the first-ever cumulative look at the project’s consistent and ongoing water quality violations. The map details locations, dates, descriptions, and photos of erosion control failures and evidence of water pollution caused by construction of the MVP.

More than 150 incidents are shown on the Mountain Valley Watch Incident Report Map.

Sierra Club Virginia Chapter Pipelines Campaign Coordinator Kirk Bowers said, “This map shows an alarming pattern of erosion control problems, with more than 150 incidents observed since mid-April. As you can clearly see from the photos taken by observers, there is no doubt that MVP and Precision Pipeline failed to prevent sediment from polluting our streams and wetlands.

“Even though they are responsible for construction inspection, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality was noticeably absent from MVP construction sites until mid-May. DEQ finally issued a toothless Notice of Violation, but it is too little, too late. There is no right way to build these fracked gas pipelines. The only way to truly protect our water, climate, and communities from the fracked gas MVP is to abandon the project, which is not even needed.”

Mountain Valley Watch Administrator Jason Shelton said, “Volunteers and landowners have shown the approved erosion and sediment control devices are consistently ineffective and overwhelmed by typical Appalachian storms. The incident mapping shows why Virginians needed DEQ onsite from the beginning of construction.”

Russell Chisholm with Protect Our Water Heritage Rights (POWHR) said, “The incidents shown in this map clearly indicate not only a need for increased presence of DEQ inspectors on the site of construction, but also  for DEQ to be more willing to hold the corporation and its contractors accountable to the plans that were approved by the agency for the project. Volunteers have been doing a vast amount of work monitoring and reporting the issues they see in their own communities, but it’s time for DEQ to step up and take real enforcement action. DEQ should be enforcing the law, not managing mitigation after damage has already been done.”