‘It’s a deal with the devil’: outrage in Appalachia over Manchin’s ‘vile’ pipeline plan

aking on the fossil fuel industry in West Virginia was always going to be a David v Goliath type battle, but after years of protests, lobbying and lawsuits, 68-year-old Becky Crabtree thought the community-led resistance had beaten the Mountain Valley pipeline (MVP) in a fair fight.

So when news broke earlier in August that the state’s fossil-fuel friendly senator Joe Manchin had resurrected the beleaguered pipeline, Crabtree, a high school science teacher who teaches students about the climate crisis, felt “numb”.

Manchin, a conservative Democrat who receives more campaign financing from the fossil fuel industry – including pipeline companies – than any other lawmaker in Congress, had agreed to back his party’s historic climate legislation before the crucial midterm elections. But only after he negotiated a side-deal to fast-track the MVP.

“It’s the unfairness that makes me so angry. It’s a deal with the devil,” said Crabtree, 68, who owns a 30-acre sheep farm in Lindside, Monroe county.

The deal is a sweet one for the pipeline’s supporters. Democratic leaders agreed to advance separate legislation in September that would “require the relevant agencies to take all necessary actions to permit the construction and operation of the MVP and give the DC circuit jurisdiction over any further litigation”.

This could help the pipeline company circumvent judges who have suspended construction and overturned permits over environmental concerns, and have future legal cases heard in an appeals court in Washington, which is considered more favourable to developers.

It’s part of a broader set of concessions negotiated by Manchin to diminish environmental protections and expedite permits and construction of pipelines and other energy infrastructure, limiting legal challenges by concerned communities and environmental groups.

It also mandates new oil and gas drilling deals in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico – places that environmentalists have also fought in court to preserve. Any public lands given over to solar and wind developments must be accompanied by millions of acres handed to oil and gas – tying the US to planet-heating energy projects for decades.

Brett Hartl, a campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the side-deal was a “vile tribute” to the fossil fuel industry. “These companies are wrecking our climate and raking in record profits, and more federal help is the last thing they deserve.”

Campaigners also warn that the slew of concessions will sacrifice another generation of Black, Latin, Indigenous and low-income communities, who will bear the brunt of air pollution, noise and displacement from the new projects.

Still, many experts argue that the concessions were worth it to secure the country’s first ever climate legislation, which provides $369bn for the transition to electric vehicles and renewable energy – a historic investment that scientists estimate will lead to net reductions of 40% by 2030, compared with 2005 levels.

For those who will be directly affected, the trade-off is a bitter pill to swallow.

Crabtree, who was arrested in 2018 after trying to stop construction on her property by chaining herself to her old Ford Pinto, said: “I understand how compromises work, and I’m glad that we finally got some action on climate change. But our communities and the environment are being sacrificed for Manchin and his friends, and that’s painful.”

The Mountain Valley pipeline would stretch 303 miles across steep forested Appalachian mountains, farmland and a thousand or so streams, rivers and wetlands, transporting liquified shale gas from north-western West Virginia to southern Virginia.

It will cut through karst terrain – complex geological structures created by the breakdown of soluble rocks like limestone and dolomite – characterised by springs, creeks, caves and sinkholes. This Swiss-cheese like underground landscape has blessed the area with abundant water sources, but the porous, unstable nature of the land makes it vulnerable to contamination, according to the US Geological Survey. Recent heavy rains led to mudslides and slippage across the region, and pipeline opponents argue that putting anything volatile in the ground is too risky.

The company said it had “worked diligently to identify a route that poses the least overall impact on communities, cultural and historic resources, and environmentally sensitive areas, including karst topography regions”.

A man seen in a water plant area behind a wire fence
Howdy Henritz at the shutoff valve near his home. Photograph: Mark Trent/The Guardian
Of big concern is Peters mountain – a sprawling peak covered in oak, maple and hickory trees with sheer drops, endangered species and breathtaking views that straddles state lines to Virginia. The pipeline would cut across the imposing mountain, which supplies clean drinking water to just over half of Monroe county residents.

“Just because Joe Manchin wants to fast-track this fossil fuel infrastructure, the facts haven’t changed. The violations, inconsistencies and holes in the permitting are still there. This land is very vulnerable, the threat to our water supply hasn’t changed,” said Howdy Henritz, 82, a clean-water advocate and small landowner in Greenville, Monroe county, who relies on spring water.

“Hearing the news was like getting sucker-punched. I will never vote for Manchin again.”

But others such as Bill Shiflet, a real estate agent, farmer and chair of the Monroe county building commission, support Manchin’s deal, and believe environmental concerns are “unfounded”.

He said: “We have pipelines all over this country. Once the gas is flowing, Mountain Valley will bring in game-changing amounts of money through severance and property taxes, and will allow us to sell West Virginian gas to our allies in Europe … Shutting off fossil fuels now would be very bad news, we’re not ready.”

The project is over budget, behind schedule and currently at a standstill because it does not have the necessary permits to cross waterways and wetlands – which Manchin wants to sidestep. Earlier this week, the company was granted a four-year extension, until October 2026, to complete the project. (The company claims that roughly 94% of work on the MVP is complete, but according to calculations by environmental groups the true figure is closer to 55%.

On the other side of Peters mountain in Giles county, Virginia, Georgia Haverty, 82, owns 500 acres with pick-your-own apple orchards, a restaurant, a wedding venue and doggy daycare. In recent years, extreme and unpredictable weather patterns have led to crop failures, which Haverty believes underscores the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels. “Sacrificing the planet for bigger corporate bank accounts is not a reasonable tradeoff. The problem is we’re Appalachian, [and] we don’t have any political influence,” he said.

The pipeline industry’s financial influence in Washington, however, is growing.

So far this year, the industry has donated $331,000 to Manchin – up from $20,000 in 2020, according to federal campaign finance disclosures tracked by Open Secrets. Four Democrats are among the top 20 industry beneficiaries, who include Manchin, who has received more than the next five lawmakers put together, as well as Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Chuck Schumer, the Senate leader from New York who negotiated the deal for Manchin’s vote. Since 2017, Schumer has also raised at least $281,000 from the country’s largest utility, NextEra Energy, a stakeholder in MVP.

A spokesperson for Manchin said he has “always been in full compliance with ethics and financial disclosure rules’’ and “always had West Virginia’s best interest in mind”. Schumer’s office did not respond.

Haverty said that if she’s learned one thing from fighting the pipeline, it’s that money matters. “If you own something and someone with more money wants it, they will take it – and the facts, regulations and fairness don’t matter. It’s the opposite of the American dream,” said Haverty, who was among 300 residents in Virginia sued using eminent domain powers to force the pipeline on her land. A lawsuit challenging the use of eminent domain for private gain – which under the constitution is restricted to the government taking private property for public use – is ongoing.

But it’s not over till it’s over, and the next stage of this struggle will be over permitting – which the company believes the fourth circuit court in Richmond, Virginia, that has overturned crucial permits suspending construction has got “wrong” and Manchin wants to bypass.

While some Democrats point out lengthy permitting procedures have also slowed renewable energy projects and the transmission of clean electricity across the country, the party’s progressive wing is reluctant to fulfil Manchin’s bargain.

“Polluting industries may have won that promise in a deal with a select few, but I intend to do everything in my power to convince the rest of my colleagues to break it,” said Raúl Grijalva, chairman of the House’s natural resources committee and a congressman from Arizona. Rashida Tlaib, another progressive Democrat, added that given Manchin’s previous political manoeuvrings around the climate bill “we owe him nothing now” on permits.

Like the Dakota Access pipeline on Indigenous lands at Standing Rock, the MVP could become a national call to protest, and will then come down to how much political capital and force leaders are willing to deploy. On Wednesday, more than 650 groups sent a letter to congressional leaders, calling on them to abandon Manchin’s fossil fuel side-deal.

In Montgomery county, it was a wealthy rural neighbourhood on the outskirts of the city of Blacksburg, where residents first mobilised against the MVP almost eight years ago, creating pipeline monitoring networks and legal strategies that morphed into a regional and national movement.

David Seriff, 64, a telecoms account executive, and his wife Bridget Simmerman, 60, a psychotherapist, hosted the first meetings, and over time the pipeline route shifted to avoid some of their properties. “This is a wealthy neighbourhood, we have more influence than others, but we’ve seen outrageous abuse of individual and property rights, it’s so un-American,” Seriff said.

Less than half a mile up a wooded fire access road, piles of the 43in carbon steel pipeline are visible up and down the mountainside, rusting on the deforested corridor since construction was suspended a couple of years back.

Seriff said: “The bottom line is that we don’t need more methane infrastructure. We need to move forward not back. This deal is an outrage but it’s not over. We’re organised and ready, and we’re going to stop this.”

the guy who fled to Cancun when his state was freezing in the dark is complaining about "slacker baristas"

such contempt for real laborers https://t.co/CEfJcSxwko

— Faiz (@fshakir) August 26, 2022

How Biden stays friendly with Joe Manchin and Bernie Sanders at the same time

Way back in 2015, when I was a cub reporter, I went to an event at the Washington Hilton with a bunch of labor unions and environmental leaders. Coincidentally, it took place the day after Hillary Clinton had announced her candidacy, and two potential challengers were speaking that day: Senator Elizabeth Warren and then-vice president Joe Biden.

While Warren was clearly on friendly terrain, Biden faced some opposition. The Obama administration was promoting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free-trade agreement hated by both groups hosting the event. But Biden softened the audience up, saying it was important to “dance with the one who brung you” and talking about how both factions supported him early in his career. By the end of the speech, he had them eating out of the palm of his hand.

I’ve thought about that moment a ton recently, because it reminds me of the place where Biden is now as the leader of the Democratic Party.

That speech at the Washington Hilton was remarkable because, while Biden and the administration had no intention of backing down from the free trade deal, he was able to make the people gathered there feel that they were being heard. This is the modus operandi behind the run of good luck he’s enjoyed lately, and it’s testament to a simple formula for success: Even if no-one gets everything, everyone gets something.

Allow me to explain. Last year, Democrats were mostly split on how to get Biden’s agenda through Congress. Moderates wanted to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill before Build Back Better, which would be put through the Senate on a simple party-line vote via the budget reconciliation process. Progressives wanted a hard guarantee that the infrastructure bill would only be passed once Build Back Better’s future was assured. That gap between the two positions led to many late nights on the Hill.

In late September, White House advisers met with Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to try and get them to a “yes” on Build Back Better. That effort ultimately failed. Neither senator got to yes; if anything, the pressure likely repelled them further, particularly Sinema.

A few weeks later, Biden tried to get House Democrats to pass the bipartisan bill ahead of a trip to Europe, which didn’t happen. (The ensuing frustration is partially why moderate Democrat Stephanie Murphy of Florida called progressives “the Never-Enough Caucus”.) But a week later, after an hours-long huddle, the Congressional Progressive Caucus agreed to passing the infrastructure bill without Build Back Better after Biden and Pelosi made the hard sell.

Even though every member of the caucus except the Squad voted for the infrastructure package, it was clear the reconciliation bill was on life support until the two holdout senators could be brought on board. In the end, plenty of feelings were hurt when Manchin killed Build Back Better in December.

And yet, almost a year later, it seems like Biden and the Democratic leadership have figured out how to lead their members while making sure they don’t feel railroaded.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer kept his negotiations with Manchin private. And judging by the name of the bill – the Inflation Reduction Act – and its added provisions for lease sales for drilling, Schumer let his West Virginian colleague take the lead. When the act was finally passed, Manchin stood by Biden’s side as he signed it.

Conversely, as University of Denver professor Seth Masket tweeted, Biden’s announcement on student debt this week is clearly an olive branch to Senator Bernie Sanders. It’s a policy that Biden originally announced during the 2020 campaign, in order to reach out to primary voters who had backed Sanders and Warren.

Given the politics of today’s Democratic Party, and the Senate in particular, keeping both senators enthused is crucial, and it appears to be working. Sanders expressed his dissatisfaction with the pared-down IRA ahead of the vote for it, dragging out the process with amendments his party comrades refused to vote for, for fear of tanking the bill altogether. After that abrasive end to the year-long process, the student loan cancellation feels like a decent consolation prize, and Sanders has duly praised it.

Meanwhile, as our friends over at Punchbowl News reported a few weeks back, this move amounts to something of a reward for Warren’s willingness to play ball during the IRA negotiations. Back then, she and other advocates for aggressive climate action essentially told Schumer to take whatever deal he could with Manchin. (Schumer has championed canceling student debt as well, so he’s been given a prize too).

On top of this, Biden has covered his bases in the House too, satisfying House Majority Whip James Clyburn not only with the student debt announcement but with the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson. It was Biden’s pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court that earned him Clyburn’s endorsement ahead of the South Carolina primary, the state which propelled him toward the Democratic nomination.

Biden’s style isn’t failure-proof. Senate Democrats were furious at Sinema when she almost scuppered the whole IRA deal, and the House caucus will likely have a contentious time negotiating a police funding deal when they get back from recess. And the fun might well end when Republicans could still win back the House, the Senate, or both. But for now, Biden seems pleased to dance with every partner possible in the Democratic coalition – right up until the music stops.

Puff piece on Biden, interesting to see how the centrist world views the relationships.

Carolyn Maloney’s ousting brings opportunities. She was horribly corrupt.

NBC News: Rep. Jamie Raskin has told colleagues he'll run to be the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee next year. @NBCNews

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) August 27, 2022

WH is probably close to the truth with this tweet:

For years, Pell Grants allowed us to help lower-income families send their kids to college – it used to cover 80% of the cost. Today, it's only 33%.

My Administration's student debt relief plan can relieve up to $20,000 in student loan debt for 27 million Pell Grant recipients.

— President Biden (@POTUS) August 27, 2022

I had to explain this to someone at a work gathering yesterday.