Standing Rock Part 2? 16,000 Sign Petition Demanding West Virginia Gas Pipeline Be Stopped

WASHINGTON, DC — No sooner have the Dakota Access Pipeline protests been wrapped up with President Obama blocking the project than a new pipeline protest is cropping up on the other side of the country.

Advocacy group Appalachian Voices released a statement Thursday claiming that more than 16,000 people had sent comments or signed a petition to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) demanding that the agency reject the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a proposed 300-mile natural gas pipeline that would run from northwestern West Virginia to southern Virginia.

The pipeline would provide two million dekatherms per day of capacity to markets in the Mid- and South-Atlantic regions of the United States, according to the project's website.

Appalachian Voices argues that the MVP pipeline comes with more harms than benefits.

"The proposed pipeline passes through important habitat in the Jefferson National Forest and would have devastating impacts on the New River Valley and surrounding areas," the group said in a statement. "There are many substantial deficiencies in the DEIS [draft environmental impact statement] that must be corrected through the issuance of a completely revised DEIS, including the failure to fully evaluate the need for the MVP and the failure to fully evaluate the impacts to water resources, wetlands, cultural resources, threatened and endangered species, and climate change implications. Correcting these deficiencies will require significant new analysis and the incorporation of high quality and accurate information regarding MVP impacts."

The group claims that the DEIS fails to identify all reasonable alternatives, doesn't consider climate change impacts, doesn't address the need for pipeline and fails to provide adequate environmental information.

The Dakota Access Pipeline protest riveted the nation for weeks. Members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe established a camp at the crossing of the Missouri river to stop the pipeline's construction, enduring violent opposition from security workers, police and even soldiers, who used dogs, riot gear and military equipment in an unsuccessful attempt to disperse the protesters. Their numbers swelled into the thousands, and on Dec. 4, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied an easement for construction of the pipeline under the Missouri River. Some protesters have remained at the site in case the matter is not fully closed.

Image via still from YouTube video "#NoDAPL - Water protector "Happi" American Horse in North Dakota" at about 0:09