CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC, and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection have entered into a consent order, obligating the company to pay nearly $266,000 for repeated environmental violations.
According to the Charleston Gazette-Mail, some of the violations were discovered by citizens and reported to the WVDEP. Beginning in April 2018, several notices of violations were issued, mostly regarding erosion and water contamination in Braxton, Wetzel, and Monroe Counties.
Penalties are calculated based on the potential that the violation has to harm the environment.
The pipeline project, which has been the subject of ongoing protests by environmental groups and by individual citizens, originally was estimated to cost $3.7 billion and is now projected to cost approximately $4.6 billion.
The completion date for the pipeline has been pushed back to the end of 2019.