As construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline draws closer, a coalition of environmental groups is asking a federal appeals court to issue a stay that would stop the project in its tracks.
Filed late Monday, the motion argues that a court-ordered delay is needed to prevent the “irreparable environmental harm” that would occur once work on the buried natural gas pipeline begins.
“Once private property is taken, mature trees are cut, steep slopes denuded, wetlands filled, trenches dug, and a high pressure large-diameter pipeline is laid and filled with gas, the court can no longer restore the status quo,” the motion states.
The request for a stay, filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, aims to stop tree felling and other construction that could start as soon as Feb. 1.
Bringing the action are five environmental organizations: Appalachian Voices, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, the Sierra Club, the West Virginia Rivers Coalition and Wild Virginia.
As proposed, the Mountain Valley Pipeline would run 303 miles from northern West Virginia to Pittsylvania County in Southside Virginia.
The Roanoke Times – Laurance Hammack – 01.09.18
Posted by: Nelson Bailey
Dear Friends under the permanently-damaging Menace of pipeline throughways and compressor stations: Take a look at what happens when people clear the forests around even the best-built houses – http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-mudslide-santa-barbara-20180110-story.html
Everyone in Buckingham knows that once people start clearing land, the ground´s not the same again. The sponge that holds water on the earth under the trees, once ripped up, will fail and erode and make floods happen when lots of rains fall. And it rains in Buckingham!
Worse, these pipes go in a straight line up and down hills and we all know what the water would do, shoot alongside the bare area of the pipes and worse, destabilize the earth without trees – and worse, if a fire happened – higher chances are that would be so with the fuels in those pipes, well, that´s a Santa Barbara LA mudflood recipe for Buckingham.
No, no, no. This thing is a sham from elsewhere. No to pipes through Buckingham and our good neighbors.
It is our right to have a home free of violent deforestation where we had retreated precisely for the clean water and trees, the calm, the kind of people who have been here a long time, and for the history of respect to private property in Virginia.
No pipeline. That is just wrong.
This Changes Everything.