Get Involved

Mountaintop Removal Will Be a Significant Consequence of the ACP

The focus on environmental consequences of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline(ACP) has largely centered upon impacts on water resources and plant and animal species. Recent work done by the Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition (DPMC) has broadened that concern to an examination of the effect the ACP would have on the many mountain ridges that the project would cross.

Dominion Transportation, Inc., managing partner for the ACP, has indicated in resource filings it has made with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that in several locations in the mountainous areas of the route the pipeline would run along the tops of mountaintop ridges, in some instances for up to at least a mile. Because many of these ridges are very narrow and formed by very steep slopes, to achieve the width of land necessary to construct the pipeline, it would be necessary to remove the tops of these ridges, perhaps by as much as 50 feet of elevation. It is estimated that there are over 20 locations on the ACP route where mountaintop removal would be necessary.

The serious impact of removing such ridgetops is two-fold: 1) the visual impact it would have in altering the scenic view would be significant; 2) the earth and rock removed from the ridgetops would seriously exacerbate the already large concern of erosion and sediment control associated with the project. Dominion has so far been vague about how it intends to manage this problem (see the ABRA Update story from issue #119 on the company's lack of responsiveness to the U.S. Forest Service).

This week's issue of The Recorder, the newspaper serving Highland and Bath Counties in Virginia, features a major article on how mountaintop removal would impact just one portion of the route. The map below illustrates the magnitude of the issue in just a 15-mile portion of the route in Pocahontas, Highland and Bath Counties.

An organization that describes its mission as exposing the true costs of fossil fuels contends that the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline and the separate but similar Atlantic Coast Pipeline would be "climate disasters." Oil Change International, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., cites evidence it says debunks the conventional wisdom that natural gas is a cleaner fuel than coal for generating electricity. The organization released reports Wednesday that suggest the two pipeline projects and associated pollution from methane emissions "would together contribute as much greenhouse gas pollution as 45 coal-fired power plants." The Mountain Valley Pipeline project alone would yield annual greenhouse gas pollution equivalent to the emissions from 26 average coal power plants or more than 19 million passenger vehicles, Oil Change International reported. The calculations of greenhouse gas emissions contributed by the two pipelines did not factor in reductions in emissions that burning natural gas instead of coal might yield at the power plant where combustion occurs. Lorne Stockman, a Staunton-based research analyst for Oil Change International, explained that the analysis does not assume that gas plants will replace coal plants. "New gas brought into the market is today competing with clean energy, not only coal," Stockman said. "This competition between gas and clean energy can only increase." Oil Change International's calculations were informed by data from PSE Healthy Energy, a nonprofit research institute which contends that methane leakage across the natural gas supply chain equals about 3.8 percent of U.S. gross natural gas production.

Mountaintop Removal Will Be a Significant Consequence of the ACP

Fossil fuels foe contends Mountain Valley Pipeline is a 'climate disaster'