MVP Southgate Updates: May 2021

Last week, we learned that NCDEQ used it’s authority to reissue the denial of the stream crossing permit for the MVP Southgate project. This followed an original denial letter in August of 2020 and a federal court hearing that ruled NCDEQ had the authority to deny the permit. This is a huge win for impacted community members, and communities in the Dan and Haw River watersheds. See our press release here. MVP Southgate has a few options of how to proceed, but all options are costly and cause significant delays.
In Virginia, the Air Board will hold a hearing to determine the fate of the Air Quality permit for the Lambert Compressor station in late June. We will be working with our partners in Virginia to coordinate talking points and comments for this hearing. So far, this process generated over 400 comments! Thank you to everyone that worked on this!

MVP mainline is also facing an increasingly uncertain future. A financial report released early this week acknowledge that the project is now four years behind schedule and 2.5 billion dollars over budget.

“Mountain Valley Pipeline said Tuesday it will take longer, until summer 2022, and cost more, $6.2 billion, to complete a natural gas pipeline that will run through Southwest Virginia. The latest in a series of such announcements was made by Equitrans Midstream Corp., the lead partner in the joint venture. When construction began four years ago, the project was expected to be finished by late 2018 at a cost of $3.7 billion.”

In the same report, the Southgate project has delayed its projected in-service date to spring of 2023, which is three years behind schedule. With every delay, the costs go up exponentially, so this is a big win for us!

We’ll continue to update our members about ways to stay involved, but right now, we are celebrating this huge win. NCDEQ has prioritized the needs of our communities and the protection of our natural resources over the profits of a fossil fuel company.

For more information, check out the other amazing groups working on this fight with us!

https://www.danriverkeeper.org/
https://appvoices.org/
https://powhr.org/
https://www.sierraclub.org/north-carolina
https://climatenetwork.org/
http://priceofoil.org/
https://www.ncwarn.org/
https://www.ncconservationnetwork.org/

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