State officials on Wednesday ordered the Mountain Valley Pipeline to pay $17,500 for violating environmental regulations over a three-month period, marking the fifth consecutive fine of its kind.
The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality’s latest quarterly review of the natural gas pipeline’s compliance with erosion and sediment control rules covers June 11 to Sept. 10. The 303-mile, 42-inch-diameter pipeline from West Virginia into Southside Virginia began operating on June 14.
Examples of violations include allowing sediment to enter streams and improperly installing erosion control matting. Individual fines range from $500 to $6,500, and most problems were corrected within a day, according to DEQ data.
Mountain Valley Pipeline spokesperson Shawn Day said in an email that the third quarter included extremely heavy rainfall and that “all of the noted items, most of which relate to issues with erosion control devices, have been resolved, and full payment will be made without dispute.”
Day said that Mountain Valley “continues to work collaboratively with regulators and landowners to complete final restoration activities.”
“It’s important to note that Mountain Valley agreed to unprecedented oversight and transparency of project work,” Day said. “Since 2018, this has included more than 47,800 state, federal and third-party environmental inspections and more than 72,000 inspections by MVP’s internal environmental team. If an issue is identified, the project team moves quickly to address it.”
Before this latest penalty, the DEQ had fined Mountain Valley $98,500 via such quarterly reviews since the summer of 2023. The fines stem from a December 2019 consent agreement in which Mountain Valley Pipeline agreed to pay $2.15 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the state environmental agency.
The $7.85 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline can move up to 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas daily from West Virginia through six Virginia counties, ending at a Transco compressor station in Pittsylvania County.
The project was first announced a decade ago and was originally intended to be constructed in four years at less than half its final cost. It was met with staunch resistance from landowners, environmentalists, and some elected officials; the battle over the pipeline eventually reached the halls of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court before federal officials gave it the OK to begin operating in June.
In late August, U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, wrote to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates the construction of interstate natural gas pipelines. He said that some of his constituents had raised concerns about erosion and the completion of restoration work along the pipeline right-of-way. On Oct. 30, FERC Chairman Willie Phillips replied, telling Griffith that MVP, DEQ and FERC were working on installing permanent erosion control measures on the constituents’ properties and that FERC would “continue to monitor this situation.”
