Anti-pipe gas: causing environmental damage through the park

Mount Bent (VG) President Joe Biden averted economic collapse. For Red Terry, it’s a personal disaster.

The 66-year-old is walking through his garden.

“This is my heaven,” says Red Terry, of the property that has been in her husband’s family for seven generations.

After a few steps, she came out onto a gray, stony path – hell for her.

Contrary to the Terry family’s apparent will, it is here, on their property, that preparations are being made to bury the tubes for the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP).

— Since then, I felt like I needed to vomit 24 hours a day, says Red Terry as she VGs around her property in Paint Mountain, Virginia.

Gas and debt ceiling

For years, there’s been a tug-of-war between the players behind the MVP and the opponents, the entire 487-kilometer route through West Virginia and Virginia.

After some unusual White House tradeoffs, the battle appears lost for Red Terry and his opponents.

Congress and President Biden recently had to come to an agreed agreement to lift the so-called debt ceiling To avoid running out of money from the treasury.

If it were not for the threat of an economic collapse with unimaginable global repercussions.

A few days later, the majority of Republicans and the Biden administration agreed.

But there was a surprise in the agreement: The completion of the MVP gas pipeline was to be included in the payload.

Large parts of the pipeline have been laid, but through protests and lawsuits, it has long seemed difficult to complete the rest – including in Terry’s garden.

All remaining permits should now be processed quickly. Another part of the agreement protects MVP in practice from lawsuits.

Fear for life

First, the companies behind MVP got it confiscationconfiscationWhen public authorities allow compulsory purchase of private property to facilitate, for example, infrastructure. Part of the Terry family estate. Then the forestry machines came to clear the woods nearby on the brother-in-law’s property.

Then Red decided to take action. For 34 days, around the clock, she lived in a fragile log cabin ten meters up in one of the trees to be removed.

– Stop cutting down my trees. And then they had had enough. My lawyer said we’d have to pay $1,000 for each day we campaigned, says Terry.

The gas pipeline will meander through several hundred kilometers of forests, rivers, streams and wetlands and cross the US Appalachian National Trail.

Water quality and endangered animal species and ecosystems may be affected.

There is also a big concern about StrippingStrippingErosion is a process in which rocks, minerals, soil, or other loose masses are eroded and transported to another location by wind, water, or ice. Source: The Great Norwegian Dictionary. In porous Earth, not least how billions of cubic meters of gas will affect the environment.

But for Terry and others who own or can afford to move it onto their own property, there is also a fear for life — leaks and, in the worst case, an explosion.

– Terry says it’s simply impossible to pass over these mountains in a safe way.

This is not the first time that Biden has approved a controversial oil and gas project. VG visited the isolated village on the Alaskan tundra marked by another conflict. Read the report below:

– panic

In 2014, David Siref received a letter. A company wanted to lay a pipeline through his property—actually through his home, he says.

“We panicked,” says Serif on our way to a mountaintop on Mount Brush, an hour’s drive from Red Terry’s property.

While Seriff eventually escaped having the road on his property, the neighbor of 90 years of riding couldn’t avoid it.

Once up the hill, we can see how the wooded hillside has been marred with a jagged scar where the pipeline will come from.

Like most opponents, Serif thought they might have succeeded in stopping the pipeline.

One of the companies themselves stated that there was little chance of completion.

– We have to try every legal method, and then we have to prosecute civil disobedience. We have no other choice. He says we have to bring Greta here to help us, referring to Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg.

Senator game

The man behind the debt-ceiling agreement’s gas flipper is conservative Democrat Joe Manchin, the senator who has sat on the edge of Biden’s bill several times.

– We thought we won. Then Manchin came to the field, says Terry.

The senator has received millions of kroner in donations from gas companies, just like Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate.

Meet Joe Manchin: The Democrat who is Biden’s worst nightmare

– They only work for themselves, their own greed and insatiability. They don’t work for the American people, says Jimmy Hill, another dissident.

His water supply was destroyed after he started building the MVP where he lives. He was arrested twice after his actions.

“We have no way to stop this, except to put our bodies in their way,” Hill says.

MVP: Comprehensive research

Supporters of the pipeline believe MVP will supply much-needed gas to the world, most importantly because of the Ukraine war, which has eroded access to Russian gas.

It was also highlighted how gas is anyway better than coal.

Others point out that Democrat Manchin could become an important vote in swinging other environmental issues in the Senate — but then he would have to win re-election in Republican West Virginia, which his MVP win could contribute to.

The MVP project has gone through more investigations on environmental issues than any other natural gas pipeline in US history, and has been awarded the same federal and state permits three times, in addition to being repeatedly challenged in court, says Thomas Karam, chairman of the Board of Directors. Equitrans Midstream management, the pipeline operator, in a press release.