Protestors Take Dread Over Appalachian Pipeline to White House
WASHINGTON — Several hundred protestors descended on the concrete “courtyard” between Lafayette Park and the White House on Thursday to urge President Joe Biden to block a massive pipeline currently slated to pass through their Appalachian homelands.
Chanting “Joe Manchin must go,” and declaring their intention to get themselves arrested if that’s what it took to get their message across, the protesters want the administration to block the 300-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline, which will carry fracked gas from West Virginia to southern Virginia.
In essence, the protest was an example of another boot dropping in the wake of the agreement between Congress and the White House to suspend the U.S. debt limit and prevent a potentially ugly default on the nation’s debts.
The deal, signed into law by President Biden two Saturdays ago, includes a provision describing the final construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline as being “required in the national interest.”
The resumption of the pipeline project has provoked environmental activists and grassroots organizations who say the deal to continue it was made without their input or normal administrative review of project applications.
They’ve been focusing their attention on Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a supporter of the project, who they claim has sold them out for campaign contributions while ignoring the ramifications of climate change.
As it happened, the protest coincided with one of two days last week when air quality in the region descended to dangerous levels thanks to widespread wildfires in Canada.
To a man and a woman, the protesters, many of them stubbornly sitting in rocking chairs, said they were livid that Biden is allowing the pipeline to go through, especially given the president’s stance that he is determined to rein in fossil fuels and, with them, the worst effects of climate change.
The pipeline, first proposed in 2014, is a joint venture among several natural gas companies and the utility NextEra Energy.
In a written statement, a spokeswoman for the company said the pipeline is already about 94% complete and has been reviewed repeatedly by experts who say it can be “built and operated safely.”
Dan can be reached at [email protected] and @DanMcCue
