CLICK HERE to submit a personalized comment to NCDEQ, urging them to deny Southgate’s 401 permit.
In addition to your personal story, please incorporate some of the talking points below into your comment!
Mountain Valley Pipeline Southgate - NC 401 Permit Talking Points
Ask: DEQ should again deny MVP’s 401 water quality certification because the Southgate project would permanently harm waterways, wetlands, and aquatic resources.
Impacts to water bodies
- MVP Southgate would impact fifty water bodies in North Carolina, including the Dan River, Cascade Creek, and thirty-six wetlands.
- Pipeline construction would increase sediment and turbidity (cloudiness) in impacted waterways, degrading water quality and harming fish and other aquatic species.
- Construction would also pollute wetlands, which provide important habitat for aquatic species and protect communities from flooding.
- The Dan River serves as a drinking water source, and Southgate would cross several of its tributaries, which could impact the river’s quality and threaten access to clean drinking water.
- Increased sediment levels in water bodies have been documented to persist post-pipeline construction.
- The developers plan to cross many water bodies using a method called dry-ditch, open-cut crossing, which is more likely to cause sediment releases compared to some other methods.
Endangered aquatic species
- The Dan River is home to several federally protected mussels, including the endangered James spinymussel, the endangered Roanoke logperch, the threatened Atlantic Pigtoe and its critical habitat, and the proposed threatened Green Floater and its proposed critical habitat. Cascade Creek also provides suitable habitat to the Roanoke logperch.
- Sedimentation and increased turbidity caused by the construction of MVP Southgate would harm these protected species and their habitat.
- Within one mile of MVP Southgate's route, there are five different plant species with state-level protections, including the threatened Carolina Birdfoot-Trefoil and the threatened Smooth Coneflower.
MVP’s history of violations
- Mountain Valley’s record of water impacts is alarming; after construction of the MVP Mainline, 94% of waterbody crossing sites suffered documented negative impacts.
- DEQ cannot trust MVP to comply with water quality laws because the company has repeatedly violated water quality laws during pipeline construction in other states.
- Sedimentation and runoff issues have persisted since the completion of MVP Mainline, negatively impacting nearby water bodies and downstream aquatic ecosystems.
Natural disasters and climate change
- MVP Southgate would partially supply methane gas to Duke Energy for new gas-fired power plants, which would release greenhouse gases and further exacerbate the climate crisis. Methane can also leak from pipelines.
- The region of the proposed Southgate project has been experiencing increasingly extreme storms, which have caused flooding, harming regional water bodies and impacting local ecosystems
- During Hurricane Helene, strong, high winds impacted Rockingham County, damaging buildings and causing trees and power lines to fall down.
- Our state resources should go toward repairing the ongoing damage to these communities and strengthening our state’s resilience to climate change rather than investing in another risky fossil fuel project.
Proximity to another high-pressure pipeline
- Nearly the entire proposed route for MVP Southgate is within ½ mile of the proposed route for Transco’s Southeast Supply Enhancement Project, another large, high-pressure methane gas pipeline.
- The construction of two new pipelines near one another will exacerbate negative impacts to water quality in rivers and wetlands.