Debt Deal Includes a Green Light for a Contentious Pipeline
The New York Times Climate activists are livid over a provision in the debt limit agreement that orders federal agencies to issue permits for the Mountain Valley Pipeline and says courts cant review them.
Environmental activists are enraged by the deal struck between President Biden and Republicans to raise the debt ceiling because it would also expedite construction of a bitterly contested gas pipeline and includes unusual measures to insulate that project from judicial review.
The $6.6 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline, intended to carry natural gas about 300 miles from the Marcellus shale fields in West Virginia across nearly 1,000 streams and wetlands before ending in Virginia, is a top priority of Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, but has been fought by environmentalists and many Virginia Democrats for a decade.
A constellation of environmental groups condemned the pipelines inclusion in a debt limit deal, with one group, Climate Defiance, planning to protest Tuesday evening at the New York home of Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader.
