megadon — rules!
While the nation has focused on oil pipeline fights such as Dakota Access and Keystone XL in the west, the natural gas industry here in the east has been planning and building a system that experts and industry analysts say will increase the number of natural gas wells drilled and completed in the Appalachian region. In short, fracking will increase once these pipelines are in place.
MVP’s and its proposed neighbor, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), 42-inch in diameter pipeline proposals are currently under review by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the government agency charged with approving or denying interstate pipeline projects.
FERC’s record is one of pipeline approval and with few, perhaps only one lone denial in the last decade. According to FERC spokesperson Celeste Miller, FERC doesn’t just “approve or not approve” pipeline applications. “The pipelines that come in the door – a lot of them don’t go out the door the same way,” she said.
‘We don’t live in Russia’
For homeowners like Fern Echols that means the thin wooden stake she can see outside her kitchen window will likely be replaced by steel pipe big enough to swallow her kitchen stove and still have some room to spare. She and her husband Earl Echols are against the pipeline.
“We have worked hard all these years, raised our family, paid our taxes, paid our bills, and moved on and we mind our business. And one day someone comes up and tells me what they are going to do with our property and possibly do with me. The last account I had this was America. The way I’m feeling right now is this is a form of Communism. We don’t live in Russia. This is Newport.”
Fern and Earl Echols have lived in this one-story home for 47 years.
For the Echols family, their land and tranquility are being taken against their will. If FERC gives approval, the private pipeline company will be able to take their property under eminent domain laws. The Echols argue there is no public gain to be had from the pipeline, but rather only the profit of private companies that produce or ship natural gas. This includes the pipeline company itself and the private Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC — a partnership of multiple investors led by Pittsburgh’s Equitable Gas’ EQT Midstream Partners, LP.