ItÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s been a long, long journey for the Mountain Valley Pipeline project. This week saw an important milestone in the project, but itÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s not at the finish line yet.
On Monday of last week, developers of the Mountain Valley Pipeline told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that construction on the 303-mile pipeline running from Wetzel County in northern West Virginia to a place in Virginia near the North Carolina border was complete. The next day, FERC gave pipeline developers permission to put it into use.
That was one of the final steps for the project that has taken nearly a decade and hundreds of court filings to complete.
The next step is for Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC, a consortium of five energy companies, to put the pipeline into full production and operate it safely and economically while mitigating any environmental damage, the same as other pipeline companies strive to do.
Environmental groups, landowners and other parties had objected to the pipelineÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s construction. They didnÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t want the pipeline crossing a national forest. They pointed to possible impacts on endangered species. They said the pipeline would increase use of natural gas, thereby contributing to climate change. There were concerns that the pipeline crosses terrain that could be too steep for its safe operation.
In passing a debt ceiling bill last year, Congress ordered that all necessary permits be issued for the final segments of the pipeline to be completed. A key vote on that was cast by Sen. Joe Manchin. Last July, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled an order by a federal appeals court and allowed construction to continue.
ItÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s not reasonable to expect our energy infrastructure to remain stagnant. Change is inevitable. The effort to replace electricity generated by burning fossil fuels with that generated by renewable sources will require changes in the transmission infrastructure. As society becomes more dependent on online transactions and artificial intelligence, the need for more electricity will grow. Natural gas is one source of that growth. To get the gas from the wells in the Marcellus and Utica shale fields of northern West Virginia, eastern Ohio and southwestern Pennsylvania to the metro areas that will need it requires new infrastructure. Natural gas is used in industrial processes, also. Thus, the need for gas is likely to grow. Like it or not, that requires new infrastructure such as the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
The needs of society often outweigh the desire to protect viewsheds or the perceived need to avoid any risk whatsoever.
