Section of MVP Ruptures Near Roanoke Under Water Pressure Test ACCIDENTS | ENERGY SERVICES | EQUITRANS/EQT MIDSTREAM | INDUSTRYWIDE ISSUES | PIPELINES| STATEWIDE VA | VIRGINIA
There is so much misinformation and over-reaction to this incident. The neighbors are trying to scare the world about this project, as they have for years. It is worth mentioning it was only water.
Section of MVP Ruptures Near Roanoke Under Water Pressure Test
ACCIDENTS | ENERGY SERVICES | EQUITRANS/EQT MIDSTREAM | INDUSTRYWIDE ISSUES | PIPELINES| STATEWIDE VA | VIRGINIA
May 6, 2024
We have to admit we’re disappointed. A section of the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) ruptured during pressure testing last Wednesday in Roanoke County, Virginia, according to a report from the state’s environmental agency. A landowner observed sediment-laden water in her pasture on Wednesday morning and reported it to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). “The origin of the sediment-laden water reported in the complaint was from the rupture of a section of pipe during hydrostatic testing the morning of 5/1/2024,” wrote the DEQ expert, John McCutcheon.
Our first thought was, “Well, the process of testing is working as designed. Better a problem is found and fixed now rather than after it goes into service.” But honestly, that rings hollow. The fact that there was a breach is not comforting and gives those on the left an “I told you so” talking point that will be spread far and wide. And then there are the neighbors who live a half mile from the rupture. That’s a good distance away, but still, it’s disconcerting. Just keeping it real, we wouldn’t be thrilled about it either.
Further pressure testing is paused while Equitrans, the builder, figures out what happened and what went wrong. Testing (using water under pressure, called hydrostatic testing) has been completed for roughly 269 of the project’s 303.5-mile route. There’s no word on how long this will delay the hoped-for May 23 startup. Better another delay than a tragedy.
The incident happened in the Bent Mountain area of Roanoke County. Landowner Kathy Chandler noticed the sediment-laden water in her pasture and reported it. The DEQ immediately sent out one of its experts, John McCutcheon, to check on it. Here is a summary of his report from the DEQ website:
The origin of the sediment-laden water reported in the complaint was from the rupture of a section of pipe during hydrostatic testing the morning of 5/1/2024. Inspectors investigating the complaint observed turbid water in the stream channels conveying the release water. Later, the inspectors observed the release had overwhelmed some ECDs and caused sediment deposition on and off the ROW immediately below the site of the rupture as well as in a downstream wetland. The hydrostatic test water release slowed during the afternoon and stopped that evening. The stream channels cleared as the release water diminished and were observed running clear on 5/2/2024 with no apparent sediment deposition. On 5/2/2024, MVP reconstructed the damaged ECDs and removed the sediment deposited on and off the LOD and in the wetland. At the same time, crews prepared the area for the work required to repair the damaged section of pipe. (1)
The local Roanoke Times has the story:
A section of the Mountain Valley Pipeline atop Bent Mountain ruptured Wednesday during tests to determine the pipe’s integrity before it begins to carry natural gas under high pressure.
The buried pipe failed as it was undergoing hydrostatic testing, which involves running highly pressurized water through it to ensure there are no leaks or flaws, a Mountain Valley spokeswoman said.
Water that escaped from the damaged 42-inch diameter pipe made its way to a nearby stream, clouding it with sediment that was soon noticed by nearby residents.
As news of the incident spread, critics said Friday that it foreshadows the dangers of an explosion, which they say would have occurred had the pipe been transporting volatile natural gas rather than water.
“We have warned regulatory officials that MVP is a reckless company tossing corroding pipes into landslide-prone mountain slopes in a rush to meet its contract obligations,” Russell Chisholm of the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights coalition said in a statement.
“It is past time for our safety to come first,” Chisholm said.
After years of construction delays caused by legal fights, Mountain Valley says the 303-mile pipeline is nearly completed. The company last month asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for permission to begin operations by June 1.
Federal regulations require hydrostatic testing before a pipeline is placed into service. Mountain Valley spokeswoman Natalie Cox said the process serves as a “quality assurance test.”
The incident Wednesday morning was the first failure of a pipe during tests that have been conducted along Mountain Valley’s route through West Virginia and Southwest Virginia, according to Cox.
As of April 30, hydrostatic testing had been successfully completed on about 269 miles of the pipeline’s path, she said in an email Friday.
The condition of 42-inch diameter pipe is a key concern of opponents. Sections of the pipe lay unused along Mountain Valley’s right-of-way and in storage yards for years as lawsuits slowed construction. That raised fears that a protective coating — meant to guard against corrosion once the pipe is buried — had been weakened by exposure to the elements.
In a consent order last October, the U.S Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration directed Mountain Valley to conduct inspections and make repairs where needed.
Other pipelines have gone into operation without a failure detected by hydrostatic testing, according to Richard Kuprewicz, an expert on pipeline safety who is president of Accufacts Inc., a Redmond, Washington, consulting firm.
But Kuprewicz, who has earlier voiced concerns about landslide risks posed by the steep terrain though which Mountain Valley passes, was reluctant Friday to make too much of this week’s incident.
“A single hydrotest failure doesn’t cause undue alarm to me,” he said. “But the devil is in the details. Why did that pipe fail?”
Kuprewicz said he was confident that an investigation by PHMSA would eventually provide more information about the many unknowns that currently exist.
An official with the safety administration, who asked not to be quoted, said that hydrostatic testing has been suspended while Mountain Valley works to determine the cause of what Cox called a “water release” that was caused by a “hydrotest disruption.”
“PHMSA will continue to ensure the Pipeline is constructed, and ultimately operated, in accordance with Federal pipeline safety statutes and regulations,” the agency official wrote in an email.
Cox said the incident happened about 10 a.m. Wednesday near U.S. 221 in the Bent Mountain community of Roanoke County. No one was injured, she said, and nearby streams that were affected were clear of sediment by Thursday morning.
“Importantly, the disruption of this one hydrotest demonstrates that the testing process is working as designed and intended,” she wrote in an email. “We are committed to ensuring the safe and responsible operation of this project, and the hydrotesting process is an important aspect of preparing this pipeline system to operate safely for decades to come.”
The damaged pipe was dug up and removed from the site as Mountain Valley continues an investigation, she said. The company has reported the incident to PHMSA, FERC and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.
Cox did not provide an exact location of the incident.
But Bent Mountain residents opposed to the pipeline — who have been vigilant over the past six years in monitoring construction and reporting problems — said they believe it happened just off 221 where an access ramp leads to the Blue Ridge Parkway.
That portion of the pipeline, which passes under both the parkway and 221, was constructed in 2018.
After a friend informed her of muddy water in a creek on her nearby property, Kathy Chandler reported the incident to DEQ, saying that she believed it was caused by hydrostatic testing.
An online report from DEQ confirms that the origin of the sediment was “from a rupture of a section of pipe,” and that muddy water had overwhelmed Mountain Valley’s erosion control devices.
By Thursday, construction crews had reconstructed the erosion control measures and removed sediment from nearby property and a wetland, the report stated. DEQ, which is responsible for regulating weather-related problems with erosion, closed its investigation Friday afternoon.
Meanwhile, residents kept a close watch on the spot where they say the incident happened. Mountain Valley crews worked through Thursday night under temporary lighting.
“It was 1 a.m. when I went to bed, and they were still at it,” said Donald Wray, who lives within sight of where the pipeline crosses 221.
Early Friday morning, observers saw that the damaged pipe had been loaded onto a flatbed pulled by tractor-trailer. They reported to others in their group that the truck was headed north on 221.
Grace Terry, who lives in Roanoke and owns land on Bent Mountain, decided to see if she could spot the truck. As she waited near Cave Spring Corner, she saw the truck go by and decided to take photographs of its cargo.
“We didn’t feel like we were getting the real story of what happened,” she said. “Mountain Valley was calling it a water release.”
Terry’s cellphone photographs of the damaged pipe were shared widely on social media as word of the incident spread.
As she watched construction crews working on property near her home Friday afternoon, Chandler said she has many questions that need to be answered by Mountain Valley and regulatory agencies.
“It is their responsibility to make this project safe,” she said, “so we can all go to sleep at night.” (2)
The Charleston Gazette-Mail reported this:
Not much about the Mountain Valley Pipeline was clear on Bent Mountain in Virginia Thursday.
Not the muddy water Bent Mountain resident Kathy Chandler reported to Virginia state regulators was running through her pasture and draining into the Mill Creek watershed.
Not the extent of environmental impacts from the pipeline rupture triggering the municipal water discharge during a pipe pressure test, according to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.
And to Chandler and other Bent Mountain landowners, not how they could consider themselves safe from a potential pipe explosion or other catastrophe just three weeks away from the gas pipeline developer’s planned in-service date for the 303.5-mile project.
One thing was clear to Chandler Thursday night.
“This pipeline is not ready to put in service,” Chandler said in a phone interview.
Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC, the joint venture behind the pipeline long delayed by legal challenges rooted in recurring environmental issues, was pressurizing pipe roughly 215 feet east of Route 221 in Roanoke County as part of hydrostatic testing, according to the DEQ.
Hydrostatic testing is a pressure-based method of assessing the integrity of pipes that pipeline operators perform after construction to identify possible leaks and confirm construction techniques are sufficient before a line is placed into service.
A spokesperson for the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said Thursday testing had been suspended while the operator confirms the cause of the failure and conducts remedial actions. The spokesperson said Friday the agency couldn’t give an estimated time frame for the cause of the failure to be confirmed and remedial action to be completed.
Mountain Valley spokesperson Natalie Cox said Friday an evaluation was underway “to determine the cause and circumstances around the hydrotest disruption.”
“The important fact for your readers to understand is: the disruption of this hydrotest demonstrates that the testing process is working as designed and intended,” Cox asserted in an email, adding that hydrotesting had been completed for roughly 269 of the project’s 303.5-mile route.
But Chandler didn’t take comfort in the 42-inch-diameter steel pipe not holding up under pressure within a half-mile of her home.
“If it can happen here, it can happen any other place along the route,” Chandler said.
“This is actually one of the more relatively level areas,” fellow Bent Mountain resident Robin Austin said.
Pipeline and environmental integrity concerns
The project passing through 11 counties in West Virginia and six in Virginia has long sparked safety concerns due to the mountainous terrain it crosses and questions over the integrity of the pipeline.
The National Association of Pipe Coating Applicators has recommended against aboveground storage of coated pipe for longer than six months without additional ultraviolet protection.
But some of the pipe slated for use in constructing the pipeline had been lying uninstalled along the route for years during project hiatuses amid court challenges.
Pipeline safety advocates have noted prolonged ultraviolet exposure can cause a loss of pipe flexibility.
Bill Caram, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, a Bellingham, Washington-based pipeline safety nonprofit, previously told the Gazette-Mail a pipe could pass a coating test while lying in place but crack once lifted and placed in the ground.
Chandler is concerned about potential corrosion of pipeline in the area she said was buried in 2018.
Amid a rush to finish construction since Congress forced completion of the pipeline through a provision in the Fiscal Responsibility Act enacted in June 2023, Chandler said dewatering containers have failed, leaking into streams and wetlands.
The DEQ said sediment was discharged into a stream and wetland in the Mill Creek watershed following Thursday’s rupture.Austin, whose property comes within roughly a quarter of a mile of pipeline right-of-way crossings, said past Mountain Valley Pipeline construction has left behind sediment-laden stream bottoms with a mud-caked coating.
“It’s killing off all the little invertebrates and everything that supports the health of the streams,” Austin said.
The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection fined Mountain Valley a combined $569,000 in 2019 and 2021 for erosion and sedimentation issues.
The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality fined Mountain Valley $2.15 million in 2019, resolving a lawsuit the agency and former Virginia attorney general Mark Herring filed alleging the company violated a previously issued water quality certification by not controlling sediment and stormwater runoff.
Economic reward versus risk
But the Mountain Valley Pipeline’s proponents hope its life is only just beginning, nine years after the $7.85 billion project was first announced.
Last month, Mountain Valley asked for approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to place the project in service by May 23, adding the entire project area was expected to be fully restored by August — depending on weather and other unidentified “external factors.”
The pipeline’s supporters have predicted it will be an economic and energy boon.
Cecil Township, Washington County, Pennsylvania-based lead pipeline developer Equitrans Midstream Corp. said during an investor presentation Tuesday the gas pipeline would be a “long-haul” enterprise meant to be the “main takeaway artery” out of the Appalachian basin.
Equitrans said in an investor presentation published in February the pipeline is fully subscribed under 20-year contracts, with Pittsburgh gas producer EQT holding 1.29 billion cubic feet per day of capacity on the pipeline.
Mountain Valley has estimated the 11 West Virginia counties along the pipeline route would receive a combined $35 million annually in tax revenue from the project. The pipeline’s supporters say the project reward will be great. But a recent study contends the project risk will be great, too — approaching $1 billion.
The property value of parcels within a half-mile of the pipeline totals $999.2 million, including $203.7 million in West Virginia, according to the study by UrbanFootprint, a California-based community planning analysis company.
An UrbanFootprint spokesperson said previously the data underscore that building fossil fuel infrastructure in and around communities can expose thousands of property owners to the economic impact of pipeline failures.
The pipeline is designed to cross over 75 miles of slopes greater than 30%, an unusually high amount of pipeline over slopes that steep.
From 2004 through 2023, West Virginia had 40 “significant” pipeline incidents — a category including any of these conditions:
Fatality or injury requiring in-patient hospitalization
$50,000 or more in total costs (measured in 1984 dollars)
Highly volatile liquid releases of five barrels or more or other liquid releases of 50 barrels or more
Liquid releases resulting in an unintentional fire or explosion
The incidents resulted in four deaths and nine injuries, causing over $61 million in damages.
PHMSA says consent agreement must be satisfied
As of Mountain Valley’s in-service request last month, over a third of the pipeline route wasn’t yet in “final restoration,” which the company has defined as including installation of permanent erosion control devices, the return of topsoil, and seeding and mulching along the pipeline right-of-way.
Mountain Valley said it hadn’t yet completed pipeline coating and dent detection surveys required by a consent agreement it entered into in October 2023 with the PHMSA.
The consent agreement requiring corrective measures the PHMSA struck with Equitrans came after the agency found project conditions may pose safety risks.
A PHMSA spokesperson said Friday the operator must complete coating and detection survey requirements in the consent agreement prior to commissioning the pipeline, even if the project is approved by the FERC.
A FERC spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on whether it would approve Mountain Valley’s May 23 in-service date request following the rupture. The spokesperson said the agency was aware of the incident and was obtaining information.
‘Not almost finished’
Just after noon on Thursday, as Chandler filed an incident report with the DEQ, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., held a news conference at which she cheered the project’s progress.
“My hope is that the final completion and ribbon-cutting will occur sooner than later,” Capito said.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and other supporters have argued the pipeline will be a national security asset.
“This pipeline is essential to ensuring our nation’s energy and national security and providing affordable, reliable natural gas to hundreds of thousands of Americans, all while creating jobs and increasing tax revenue,” Manchin said in a September 2023 statement.
But Chandler doesn’t feel secure with her family living in the pipeline’s shadow.
“I think this incident shows that the pipeline is not almost finished,” Chandler said. “I think that’s probably the greatest message. If this pipeline is mandated as an effort in national security and it has that kind of gravity, it must be completed as the safest pipeline it can be. And today’s incident shows that it’s not ready for that yet.” (3)
(1) Virginia Dept. of Environmental Quality (May 1, 2024) – myDEQ Portal – #313755 – MVP
(2) Roanoke (VA) Times/Laurence Hammack (May 3, 2024) – Bent Mountain section of Mountain Valley Pipeline fails during post-construction tests
(3) Charleston (WV) Gazette-Mail/Mike Tony (May 4, 2024) – Mountain Valley Pipeline ruptures with requested in-service date looming this month