Shenandoah Mountain: George Washington National Forest

OUR NATIONAL FORESTS

Posted on September 8, 2016 by Rick Webb

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is preparing an Environmental Impact Statement, to inform decisions by regulatory and land management agencies concerning the ACP. The Forest Service will use information provided in the EIS when deciding whether to revise management plans to accommodate a new utility corridor and the related access roads and staging areas that will be required by the ACP.

Yet Dominion has asked for accelerated review, and FERC has announced that a draft EIS will be released by the end of 2016. This is unacceptable. A fast-tracked EIS will not provide the information and time needed for objective decision making. The information currently available for use in EIS preparation is incomplete and inconsistent.

Dominion proposes to provide critical environmental plans after project approval, rather than during EIS preparation. It argues that pipeline construction will not alter runoff properties and thus stormwater management plans are not needed. It intends to seek a variance from limits to the length of open-trench segments during construction, thus creating extreme runoff problems on steep mountainsides. It intends to proceed with wintertime construction despite time-of-year restrictions intended to protect brook trout and other sensitive species. And it has failed to properly conduct or report studies on significant environmental issues.

For more information, see the latest in the DPMC Story Map Series: ACP and Our National Forests.

WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE
ABRA ON FACEBOOK

Pipeline Visual Assessment Program (TU/WVRC)

VA-Specific Training Session
Access recorded webinar here

WV-Specific Training Session
Access recorded webinar here

Atlantic Coast Pipeline

The environmental cost of Dominion's proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline is unacceptable.

The proposed pipeline will cross the central Allegheny Highlands, the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the adjacent valleys. It will cut through 30 miles of national forest and cross numerous rivers, streams, and wetlands. This area represents the heart of the remaining wild landscape in the eastern United States, and it is a major biodiversity refugium that can only increase in rarity and importance.

The proposed pipeline will be 42 inches in diameter, requiring excavation of an 8 to 12-foot-deep trench and the bulldozing of a 125-foot-wide construction corridor straight up and down multiple steep-sided forested mountains. It will require construction of heavy-duty transport roads and staging areas for large earth-moving equipment and pipeline assembly. It will require blasting through bedrock, and excavation through streams and wetlands. It will require construction across unstable and hydrologically sensitive karst terrain.

Pipeline construction on this scale, across this type of steep, well-watered, forested mountain landscape, is unprecedented.

It will be impossible to avoid degradation of water resources, including heavy sedimentation of streams, alteration of runoff patterns and stream channels, disturbance of groundwater flow, and damage to springs and water supplies.

It will be impossible to avoid fragmentation and degradation of intact, high-integrity forests, including habitat for threatened and endangered species and ecosystem restoration areas.

Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition

Allegheny-Blue Ridge Alliance

Environmental Review

Pipeline Air Force