Scars from the Mountain Valley Pipeline
As we rumble down the runway, my heart beats with anticipation as the plane picks up enough speed and the wheels lift off the ground to get that feeling of floating, airborne!
I glance back at Jenny Harnish, our videographer who films and edits our pipeline video series, smiles plastered on our faces. We look down as our familiar little town of Lewisburg passes by underneath our wings and we head toward the Greenbrier River Valley. Our first waypoint is near Pence Springs, where MVP proposes to drill under the Greenbrier River. But the river valley is still fogged in so we continue north.
Out of the fog appears a large swath denuded of trees going straight up the mountainside. Little trucks and heavy equipment can be seen moving dirt around below. The scar continues along the ridgeline until it cuts down into the valley and stream below.
The pilot slows the plane and does a few circles so Jenny can point her video camera out the window to attempt to capture the rugged terrain and steepness of the slopes. Seeing the construction from the air brings a different perspective. The pipeline scar continues along ridgetops as far as the eye can see in either direction dropping down into the valley and then appearing again on the next ridge.
Seeing the land from a plane really conveys the incredible impact humans have on the landscape. When flying in Alaska, there were great distances where I couldn’t see any human impact, so much of the landscape was wild and untouched. But flying over this region of WV, I was hard-pressed to find a spot that didn’t have an imprint of Man. At one point near Quinwood, we were seeing pipeline construction, coal mining, timbering and windmills all in the same viewshed.