About the Book . . .
This is the story of the eight-year fight against the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) and the complicit government agencies, a tragedy of malfeasance and falsehoods, stacked against people whose property the MVP crosses and their many neighbors. The charade challenges citizens to wake up and see the threats posed by the danger forced on them by both federal and state agencies, without investigation, thorough evaluation, or concern for our safety. The profound malfeasance of the agencies is documented in event after event during the ‘approval’ and construction process.
The main problem agency is the power-abusing Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) whose only objective is to write an (inaccurate and shoddy) Environmental Impact Statement so it can issue a (weakly justified) Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity. FERC disapproved only 6 of 1,021 pipeline applications in the last 30 years, and quite a few of the approved pipelines broke and exploded! Usually about one each year! In second place is the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). A Mayo Clinic physician said in the 1974 article ‘Americans Love Hogwash’ that Americans overuse vitamins and dietary supplements (beyond what they already get in ordinary foods). They fall for often-false advertised claims—a type of quackery that he termed Hogwash (worthless, false, or ridiculous speech or writing). Apply that concept to DEQ Director Paylor’s naive belief that ‘reasonable assurances’ are all DEQ needs to grant a water permit. DEQ just gets Hogwash as promises and then fails to investigate or evaluate them! Other pipeline-regulatory federal and state agencies include the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Most of the agencies were ‘captives’ of the pipelines they were supposed to be regulating, i.e., they ignored or failed to fulfill their legislated responsibility to actually regulate the pipelines. Instead, they favored the pipelines against the affected landowners and against the American Public and environmental laws. The agencies were chastised by federal courts for failure to do their duty when they issued “arbitrary and capricious” construction permits, among other serious criticisms. The main objection proven in federal courts was violation of environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the shoddiness of permits to cross the Jefferson National Forest without concern for the damage that erosion would cause. The permits were revoked once and not revised for at least two years, and then the revised permits were also revoked. By 2020, despite construction for much of nearly four years, most of the over 1,000 streams had not been crossed! With no essential permits, the possibility exists that the pipeline will never be completed.
The book is divided into three parts as simple as A, B, C:
- A. Abundant facts about the pipeline path through West Virginia and Virginia (The background, people, environment, geology, and other characteristics of the area)
- B. Bungling, complicity, and malfeasance by the agencies, including failure to consider reports filed by experts (Documentation of the blatant malfeasance and neglect by the federal and state agencies involved in many events from 2015 to date)
- C. Changes needed for justice and fairness to all citizens, e.g., require agencies to follow their mandates (Recommend effective changes to current laws regulating and perhaps now over-empowering the agencies)