2022
- Mountain Valley Costs, Delays Adding Up for Project Backers, Charleston [WV] Gazette-Mail, May 11, 2022. Featuring photo courtesy of Mountain Valley Watch.
- MVP Extends Construction Timeline, Raises Estimate of Cost, WDBJ 7, May 5, 2022 – “Chisholm is the coordinator of Mountain Valley Watch, and the co-chair of the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights (POWHR) Coalition. ‘It feels to us like it’s only a matter of time before the project becomes abandoned, so start that process now and save people additional heartache,’ Chisholm said.”
- Mountain Valley Pipeline Targeted In-service Date Pushed Back Again as Projected Cost Soars to $6.6 Billion, Charleston [WV] Gazette-Mail, May 3, 2022. Featuring photo courtesy of Mountain Valley Watch.
- Senators question federal regulators on pipeline policy, WDBJ 7, Mar 3, 2022 – “Russell Chisholm is Coordinator of Mountain Valley Watch and Co-Chair of the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights Coaltion (POWHR). Chisholm and other pipeline opponents dispute the assertion that the project is almost complete. ‘We have maps that show it’s roughly three-quarters of a mile, before they come to the first incomplete crossing,’ Chisholm said.”
- Mountain Valley Pipeline Opponents Buoyed as Federal Court Vacates Critical Permits: Interview with Russell Chisholm, Between the Lines, Feb 2, 2022 – “Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Russell Chisholm, co-chair of the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights, or POWHR Coalition, and coordinator of Mountain Valley Watch, a group that monitors construction of the pipeline. Here he talks about the fight against the fossil fuel project and where the opposition campaign stands right now.”
- Mountain Valley Pipeline Opponents File Legal Challenge to Key West Virginia Water Permit, Jan 4, 2022, Charleston [WV] Gazette-Mail – Featuring photo courtesy of Mountain Valley Watch.
2021
- Virginia regulators approve key water permit for Mountain Valley Pipeline, Dec 15, 2021, and DEP Approves Key Water Permit for Mountain Valley Pipeline, Dec 30, 2021, Charleston [WV] Gazette-Mail – Featuring photo courtesy of Mountain Valley Watch.
- Environmental Concerns Dominate Army Corps Public Comment Hearing on Key Permit for Mountain Valley Pipeline, Nov 2, 2021, Charleston [WV] Gazette-Mail – Photo courtesy of Mountain Valley Watch.
- US Army Corps of Engineers to Hold WV Public Hearing on Key Permit for Mountain Valley Pipeline, Oct 27, 2021, Charleston [WV] Gazette-Mail – “This photo from early June shows an area along the route of the Mountain Valley Pipeline near US 19 in Braxton County that was damaged flooding.” Photo courtesy of Mountain Valley Watch.
- Franklin County Landowners Settle Lawsuit against Mountain Valley Pipeline, Oct 25, 2021, Roanoke Times – Featuring photo courtesy of Mountain Valley Watch.
- Two years and a pandemic later, climate protests return to Washington, Oct 18, 2021, Grist, “Russell Chisholm has been leading an effort to stop construction of the Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline in Virginia and West Virginia. In the pre-pandemic times, organizing for the Mountain Valley Watch and other grassroots groups typically happened in person at churches and community centers. These days, it’s harder to meet in person, and a lack of reliable internet access in rural places makes it even harder to communicate, Chisholm said.”
- North Carolina tribes fear pipeline will damage waterways, burial grounds, Oct 15, 2021, Grist – Featuring photo courtesy of Mountain Valley Watch.
- Federal environmental assessment green-lights change in Mountain Valley Pipeline construction method, Aug 17, 2021, Charleston Gazette-Mail, “Monroe County resident and pipeline opponent Maury Johnson noted in an email Tuesday that he was still analyzing the assessment and that the commission staff’s analysis does not permit Mountain Valley to proceed with water crossing construction.” Featuring photo courtesy of Mountain Valley Watch.
- Hileman and Bowers: Mountain Valley Pipeline is an unnecessary imposition, Aug 11, 2021, Roanoke Times – Letter to editor co-written by MVWatch founder Kirk Bowers: “At a time when we are in a climate emergency, locking in such a large source of new emissions is absolutely reckless.”
- EPA recommends not issuing key water permit for Mountain Valley Pipeline, which touts carbon offset plan, July 12, 2021, Charleston Gazette-Mail – “The EPA’s concerns mirror what community members and experts have been saying for years regarding the severity and extent of harm to waterways and wetlands in both states from the MVP,” Amy Adams, North Carolina program manager of Appalachian Voices, said in a statement. Featuring photo courtesy of Mountain Valley Watch.
- Flooding effects of Mountain Valley Pipeline under scrutiny after weekend damage in central WV, June 14, 2021, Charleston Gazette-Mail – “An analysis that the anti-pipeline group Mountain Valley Watch submitted to federal regulators in February argued that an increased risk of landslides along the project route in Lewis County remains, despite efforts to stabilize slide areas.”
- Letter to the Editor, May 8, 2021, Roanoke Times – “McAuliffe lied about MVP, the most outrageous being we “wouldn’t even notice it.” Tell that to Mountain Valley Watch volunteers who have documented over 300 violations in damages to our water, our land, and our communities.”
- How to Stop the MVP Climate Bomb, Mar 10, 2021, Roanoke Times – Cites Mountain Valley Watch’s Aug 2018 comments to the Virginia State Water Control Board. The author, Rick Shingles, is one of the founders of MVWatch.
- ATC Rejects Mountain Valley Pipeline Opponents’ Request to See $19.5 Million Agreement, Feb 24, 2021, The Trek – “‘The ATC’s actions are a truly grotesque departure from their public ‘Identity Statement,’ which claims the ‘Conservancy’s staff and board embodies honesty, mutual respect, openness, continuous learning and improvement, and excellence,” ATC member Russell Chisholm said in a statement released Feb. 24. ‘Instead, the decision to enter into a Voluntary Stewardship Agreement and refuse to provide transparency about the decision inappropriately prioritizes the power of the Board over the wishes of ATC members and the public.'” Featuring photo from Mountain Valley Watch.
- Mountain Valley Pipeline still facing concerns over Lewis County erosion issues, Feb 18, 2021, Charleston Gazette-Mail – “The filing submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by Kirk Bowers, co-founder of the anti-pipeline group Mountain Valley Watch, cites topographic and rainfall studies, past filings with federal regulators and aerial photographs of the pipeline to make a case that highly erodible soils, above average annual precipitation rates, and steep mountain slopes have produced an ideal situation for landslides to occur.”
- Mountain Valley Pipeline’s Latest Challenges: Water-crossing Permits and Compressor Station Hearing, Feb 5, 2021, Appalachian Voices – Photos courtesy Mountain Valley Watch
- New stream-crossing permits sought in an attempt to finish Mountain Valley Pipeline, Jan 26, 2021, Roanoke Times – “Kirk Bowers, co-founder of Mountain Valley Watch”: MVP did not initially pursue stream-by-stream permitting because they thought a Nationwide 12 blanket permit was “faster and cheaper” and supported by the State Water Control Board and DEQ.
2020
- Mountain Valley Pipeline faces political, regulatory changes in 2021, Dec 27, 2020, Roanoke Times – Bondurant said a citizens’ monitoring group, Mountain Valley Watch, continues to spot problems with erosion control.
- Panel again hears environmental concerns about Mountain Valley Pipeline, Dec 9, 2020, Roanoke Times – A report and photographs from Mountain Valley Watch, which was formed to monitor pipeline construction when it began nearly three years ago, was submitted Wednesday to the State Water Control Board. “Let’s get some grass growing on dirt that has been sitting there for 18 months,” Kirk Bowers, a professional engineer who is one of the founders of Mountain Valley Watch, said during a public comment period of the board’s meeting.
- Self-Governance Against the MVP, Nov 12, 2020, 9 minute podcast by graduate students in conservation leadership – Features an interview with Russell Chisholm, MVWatch coordinator, on the importance of not relying “on those inspectors who have a specific outcome in mind, and that outcome is to get the thing built.”
- The Appalachian Pipeline Resistance Movement: “We’re Not Going Away,” Oct 28, 2020, App Voices – Soon after construction began on the MVP, Johnson and Crabtree were among those who formed Mountain Valley Watch, a volunteer-driven effort to document environmental violations committed by pipeline builders. As of Oct. 28, water quality monitors have reported 650 potential construction and erosion control violations.
- Opponents of Mountain Valley Pipeline Sense Momentum as Project Remains Stalled in Legal Limbo, Oct 24, 2020, WV Gazette – One of MVWatch’s founders, Kirk Bowers is quoted: “When the construction workers are gone, [there will be] nothing left except destroyed land and property violated.” “It doesn’t do anything for the people of West Virginia.”
- Pipeline Pushback, c-ville, Oct 13, 2020 – “The watch team for the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights coalition…has carefully monitored the pipeline’s construction, looking out for violations that can be reported to the Department of Environmental Quality. It continues to find new violations.”
- David Seriff, The Battle for Brush Mountain, Oct 2020, POWHR.org – “Many citizens felt that the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality was not monitoring Mountain Valley Pipeline construction closely enough. Numerous complaints and repeated occurrences of environmental damage were reported. Soon a group called Mountain Valley Watch was formed. Citizen volunteers fanned out across the pipeline path to monitor environmental degradation. Hundreds of reports were filed. Pictures, videos and even drone reconnaissance showed repeated violations by MVP. Meanwhile numerous lawsuits from property owners and environmental groups such as the Sierra Club disrupted the original timeline for completion.”
- Mountain Valley seeks to resume construction of pipeline, Sept 23, 2020, Roanoke Times – “We refuse to be made a sacrifice zone in order to reassure investors and boost Equitrans Midstream’s sagging stock performance,” said Russell Chisholm, co-chair of opposition group Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights, referring to the lead partner in the joint venture. “FERC should deny MVP’s requests for business as usual and grant our motion for a supplemental environmental impact statement with public participation,” Chisholm said in a written statement. “Anything short of that ignores a documented track record of failure and further capitulates to project managers who are openly hostile to our communities.”
- Mountain Valley asks FERC for more time to complete pipeline, Aug 26, 2020, Roanoke Times – “MVP claims it is a victim of lawsuits and lost permits, and should therefore be able to change the rules once again,” Georgia Haverty, [MVWatch volunteer] whose Giles County property will be cut in half by the pipeline, wrote in a letter to FERC urging it to deny the requested extension. “Had MVP been competent and honest, you know and I know this pipeline would have been completed on time and on budget,” she wrote. “MVP is neither of these things.”
- Despite company claims, only a fraction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline is complete in Virginia, Aug 10, 2020, Virginia Mercury – Jon Sokolow, volunteer with MVWatch’s MVP advocates’ group: “The truth is that in Virginia MVP is less than 15 percent complete. That’s 15.75 miles complete in Virginia out of a total of 108 miles. And in Spread G, the most difficult terrain on the route, the pipeline is less than 13 percent complete. In fact, in Spread G less than 20 percent of the pipe has even been trenched, much less welded. If we are talking about the 303-mile route as a whole, barely 50 percent of construction (51.32 percent to be precise) is complete.”
- The End of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline: Similar hurdles remain for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, July 21, 2020, App Voices – features MVWatch partner Indian Creek Watershed Association.
- Mountain Valley, DEQ negotiate over environmental fines, July 20, 2020, Roanoke Times – Work on MVP “unleashed a flood of complaints from landowners, environmental groups and other opponents of what will be the largest natural gas pipeline ever built in Virginia.” According to Russell Chisholm, co-chair of POWHR and coordinator of MVWatch, the “ever-increasing number of violations is evidence” that MVP cannot “abide by Virginia’s environmental laws.”
- With Atlantic Coast dead, is this pipeline next? July 8, 2020, E&E News – “The attacks by the environmental community and [nongovernmental organizations] have been good and successful at slowing these projects down.”
- Pipeline Work Threatens Virginians, July 3, 2020, Virginia Mercury – “Monitors from a community group, Mountain Valley Watch, took photographs that show MVP workers congregating in groups closer than six feet and without facemasks, despite state protocols.” – Emily Little, Virginia Clinicians for Climate Action
- Environmental regulators seek more fines against Mountain Valley Pipeline, June 29, 2020, Roanoke Times – “Virginia regulators are seeking an $86,000 fine from Mountain Valley Pipeline, saying the company continued to violate environmental regulations after it paid $2.15 million last year to settle a lawsuit.”
- Report of pipeline slips in West Virginia under investigation, raises concern, May 3, 2020, Roanoke Times – Pipeline safety consultant Richard Kuprewicz: “Land slip on its own is not a big deal, depending on the details,” but “the fact that the document mentions three sites calls for further investigation to see if there is a possible systemic issue for the pipeline and its right-of-way.”
- Community Fights Construction of Mountain Valley Pipeline, April 13, 2020, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting – features an interview with the MVWatch team
- Pristine Waters At Bottom Creek Gorge, February 25, 2020, App Voices – Op ed by MVWatch volunteer monitor Tina Badger
- Southwest Virginia pipeline fighters travel to DC for possible landmark Supreme Court case, February 26, 2020, WSLS Roanoke – features MVWatch volunteer Emily Satterwhite and POWHR/MVWatch volunteer Maury Johnson
- Pipeline opponents, trail advocates travel to Washington for Supreme Court hearing, February 24, 2020, WDBJ7 Roanoke – features MVWatch volunteer Diana Christopulos and POWHR/MVWatch volunteer Maury Johnson
2019
- Federal commission orders work stopped on Mountain Valley Pipeline, Oct 16, 2019, Virginia Mercury
- Mountain Valley Pipeline agrees to pay Virginia $2.15 million for environmental violations, Oct 11, 2019, Virginia Mercury
- Pipeline opponents raise more concerns about environmental impact, Sep 16, 2019, WDBJ – Features “a family farm in Franklin County, where Mountain Valley Watch has documented problems with excessive run-off.”
- Munley: Past time for water board to stop pipeline, Dec 12, 2019, Roanoke Times – “Citizens are owed a federal investigation to learn exactly why the unprecedented environmental destruction unfolded despite extensive date-and-time-stamped documentation by Mountain Valley Watch and property owners to Virginia DEQ.”
- Munley: Northam is ‘Greenwashing’ MVP, Aug 28, 2019, Roanoke Times – “Mountain Valley Watch’s documentation of violations and citizens’ repeated trips to Richmond to plead with the SWCB face-to-face to stop work have been ignored, but the extraordinarily-high mid-July sediment readings should move Northam’s DEQ to swiftly stop work…. Northam’s initiative cannot greenwash the environmental carnage to Virginia nor its long-term existential harm to our climate and collective future.”
- Failure of Our Regulatory, Political and Legal Systems on Stark Display with Mountain Valley Pipeline Debacle in Virginia’s Blue Ridge, August 25, 2019, Blue Virginia – “Because citizens monitor, document, and communicate violations with DEQ as volunteers through Mountain Valley Watch, they are doing the real job of the paid personnel of DEQ, who rarely show up and who permitted an optional/ private project that was first unfeasible, but that they were not equipped to oversee.”
- Regulators stop work on 2 miles of Mountain Valley Pipeline in Montgomery County, August 2, 2019, Roanoke Times – According to a statement issued by the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights Coalition, “those in positions of power chose to ignore our calls for real, meaningful enforcement through a stop work order and instead allowed MVP to work despite several missing federal permits, a pending lawsuit for violations, and at least 35 Notices of Violation in West Virginia.”
“I am appalled DEQ is in any way surprised that MVP crews are neglecting erosion and sediment control measures in an attempt to ram this project through as fast as possible. Our volunteer citizen monitors have been telling the DEQ and State Water Control Board since August 2018 and earlier that MVP was not upholding the requirements of the bad permit they issued in December 2017.”
–Russell Chisholm, Mountain Valley Watch, POWHR press release referenced by the Roanoke Times, Aug 2, 2019
- Historic Land Controversies Re-Emerge in Path of Pipeline, July 10, 2019, Blue Ridge Outdoors
- Mountain Valley Pipeline soils all in its path, July 6, 2019, Appalachian Voices – “In the absence of government help, organizations like Mountain Valley Watch take up the regulatory slack….[and] have found 562 problems.”
- Delays raise new questions for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, June 15, 2019, Roanoke Times – MVWatch “has found about a dozen cases similar to what has happened on the Bernards’ property, in which a pipe has been submerged in water for an extended time.”
- Work continues on Mountain Valley Pipeline, despite repeated problems, March 31, 2019, Roanoke Times – ““It’s obvious there needs to be an overhaul at FERC [Federal Energy Regulatory Commission],” said Jason Shelton, one of the organizers of” MVWatch.
- Amid federal criminal probe and a state lawsuit, why hasn’t the Virginia DEQ stopped work on Mountain Valley Pipeline?, March 1, 2019, Virginia Mercury – Features a tour organized by POWHR and MVWatch
- Munley: Northam should intervene on pipelines, February 27, 2019, Roanoke Times
- Bowers and Limpert: Water board should revoke MVP certificate, February 25, 2019, Roanoke Times
- Editorial: How quickly will water board act?, February 25, 2019, Roanoke Times
- “Criminal investigation of Mountain Valley Pipeline underway, document shows,” February 15, 2019, Roanoke Times – Credits documentation gathered by POWHR for prompting a criminal investigation
- “Where’s the Pipeline Hearing You Promised?” February 13, 2019, Virginia Mercury
2018
- “Mountain Valley Pipeline opponents regroup as construction resumes,” September 4, 2018, Energy News Network
- “Environmental watchdogs: A citizens’ group monitors the Mountain Valley Pipeline,” June 2, 2018, Roanoke Times
“DEQ has told us in meetings that they will not have the ability to be everywhere,” said [Jason] Shelton, who as co-owner of New River Geographics brings his drone-flying and online-mapping expertise to Mountain Valley Watch. “This is our backyard,” he said. “This is the environment we care about. All we want to do is watch and get the information to DEQ so our regulators can get to the spots we care about in a timely manner.”
–“Environmental watchdogs,” Roanoke Times
- “Busybody Brigade to Help Va. DEQ ‘Monitor’ MVP Pipe Work,” April 12, 2018, Marcellus Drilling