That SLAPP-happy MVP
As soon as construction on the Mountain Valley Pipeline began in February of 2018, resistance rose to confront it, and continued nonstop until it went ‘in service’ in mid-June 2024, 6 years behind schedule and more than 100% over budget. Creative, strong and relentless tactics successfully slowed the MVP enough to make their financial backers blink.
Peaceful protests caused delays while lawsuits worked their way through courts, resulting in stop work orders and lost permits while MVP’s incompetence became ever more apparent as pristine waterways, forests and communities continued to fall victim to MVP’s flat learning curve of pipeline construction. The demise of the MVP was in sight, until the Manchin/Schumer/Biden dirty deal enabled the Fiscal Responsibility Act, creating a deadly shortcut through established legislative and judicial checks and balances – and which will surely be used again.
Resistance to the MVP was relentless and record-breaking: For an astonishing 932 days, the Yellow Finch tree sits protected the last stand of forest in the pipeline’s path. The monopod on Peters Mountain blocked a service road to the sacrificed Jefferson National Forest for 57 days, in the same area as 2 tree sits and the skypod on Peters Mountain. A single resister protected Poor Mountain for 3 solid days, locked to the earth itself. Paired mother and daughter tree sits defended family property on Bent Mountain for 31 days. Three tree sits sprang up on a farm in Franklin County. A steady stream of bold blockades and walk-ons popped up everywhere on the route, uplifting and uniting the endangered communities against corporate greed and ruinous projects.
Law enforcement worked in cahoots with MVP at every step. Misdemeanor charges resulted in bail amounts in the thousands of dollars. Some resisters spent months in jail without bail. A grandfather’s bail was set at $35,000 and he was sentenced to 1 year in jail, with 8 months suspended. Some of those charged with misdemeanors were barred from all the counties within the state that the MVP crosses. Civil suits followed some resister’s criminal suits. One civil suit brought against three elders was for the cost of law enforcement’s extraction of the trio - $13,492 – from their 2021 blockade, but ultimately settled for a small sum after a FOIA request found that the county’s suit’s ‘damages’ figure included a wish list of extraction tools. Also included were the salaries of officers who weren’t present. And an email was revealed stating the county wanted to use the case to set an example to discourage more protests.
And then the SLAPP suits came.
SLAPP (‘strategic lawsuits against public participation’) suits aren’t new. They’re used by large corporations and those who can afford to bring lawsuits against their opposition to cost them time and money, thus intimidating them from future actions. The frequency of SLAPP suits filed by the fossil fuel industry is increasing. During its year-long construction hiatus, MVP was apparently readying itself to use this tactic: The first SLAPP suits were served last September, shortly after pipeline construction resumed on July 5.
MVP has filed at least 12 SLAPP suits against more than 48 individuals. The first of these suits named 3 people plus 25 ‘Jane Doe’s, and over the next few months grew to include 28 people in addition to the never-named 25 ‘Jane Doe’ placeholders. The suit alleges $4.3 million in damages. Other suits specified less in monetary ‘damages.’ Some of the SLAPPs contain a conspiracy charge.
SLAPP suit defendants must go through a deposition and a discovery process which may involve questions about their past, present and a wide array of possible questions – such is the ‘Wild West’ landscape of civil litigation with wide-ranging options for questioning.
None of the suits has yet gone to trial. With the pipeline all but complete, one wonders about the need to continue these heavy-handed suits. Perhaps parent company/ corporate heavy EQT, in its quest to frack & pipe all of Appalachia, doesn’t want to be seen as in any way kind, or limited in their prosecutorial powers. Toby Rice, EQT’s CEO insists ‘the sky is the limit if political leaders, regulators, consumers and allies recognize Appalachia’s potential and support the infrastructure build-out’ of Appalachia’s massive oil & gas reserves. A SLAPP suit can exist and remain in perpetuity – a life-long black cloud meant to quash opposition to Rice & EQT’s plan to destroy our climate and communities for their profit.
Living under a looming SLAPP suit affects people emotionally and practically, depending on their circumstances. It’s clear the intent of this heavy-handed tactic is fear and intimidation.
From an MVP SLAPP suit defendent on this repressive tactic:
‘MVP's SLAPP suits are spiteful, anti-democratic, and anti-community.
They specifically target the vulnerable and marginalized who have little or no resources.
In response to reasonable behaviors and freedoms, they demand financial damages and issue injunctions in an effort to undermine and criminalize community engagement, advocacy, and resistance to corporate and state violence and threaten criminal charges for failing to back down and allow their criminal project to proceed.
News of these suits has a chilling effect on the community, dividing community support and instilling fear in past and potential advocates. Nevertheless, we remain strong and remain committed to sacrifice everything to protect what we love.
May this someday be known as The Last Pipeline.
MVP has filed nearly a dozen civil suits seeking penalties and millions in damages from dozens of protesters. In response to the MVP catastrophe, so many have been compelled to act independently to put their bodies on the line in sacrifice for the community. There has been a firm and robust legal response among defendants, but sadly we've seen how those with power and access to resources have undue influence over the court and seem to often get what they ask for.
My personal perspective on the MVP uncivil suits is that of a 40-year resident of an impacted community. I live alone, below the poverty line on a single monthly disability check for an end-stage condition and growing health problems. Battling MVP BS does not deserve my energy.
For nearly a year, over 20 defendants and I been fighting MVP's lawsuit demanding over $4 million and other penalties. We have been randomly targeted for independent acts of resistance to the pipeline's assault on our community, so most of us are strangers. This has made it challenging and frustrating to navigate a response.
Since pipeline work began, hundreds have shown up in defense of our community, but only a random selection has been targeted for lawsuits. Overwhelmingly, these are the most vulnerable: poor, women, impoverished, queer, youth, out-of-towners, disabled, and the elderly are in the majority. On the other side of the table sits a small handful of very wealthy and powerful white men accustomed to getting what they want. Does this sound like justice to you?
- Cropduster
Currently, 22 climate activists in Great Britain are imprisoned with sentences ranging between 10 months to 5 years for planning actions, taking actions, or for merely being in the vicinity of an action. In Washington DC, one of the two National Gallery of Art ‘Young Dancer’ action participants is currently serving a 60-day jail sentence. The other anticipates sentencing later this year. The two resisters who colored the Constitution’s showcase in DC await what could possibly be long sentences. Even music is a weapon in the eyes of the state: a cello-playing grandfather could receive a 7-year sentence for playing music in front of a Citibank.
Increased state repression will mount as global climate chaos worsens and as corporations try to protect their investments no matter the futility of profiting from a burning planet. Nonviolent resistance is necessary when the courts, agencies and governing institutions fail to protect our collective future against a corporate-sponsored hellscape made possible by greed.
Brave and clear-sighted individuals have physically blocked the path of the MVP because other methods of halting its harms were absent or slow. Global systems collapse is underway, and the MVP is accelerating our demise. Resisters pit themselves against the wrongs, between sanity and disaster, even if for just a few hours. When the supposed ‘protections’ don’t protect us, resisters are nonetheless driven by morality to protect the life-giving Earth.
The MVP continues to decimate adjacent communities and landscapes, 3 months after it was erroneously allowed to be put ‘in service.’ The ‘restoration’ work that is taking place can never be completed - the damages are too extreme to be repaired.
Not so long ago, at the bottom of the forested hill the Yellow Finch tree sits protected was a small, clear-running creek. It was of sufficient quality to be Roanoke logperch habitat. Logperch are considered an indicator species of stream health, and only very recently were they de-listed from the ‘endangered’ list. In its ‘construction,’ the MVP decimated this waterway. Pipeline materials clogged it, trees were felled into it, machinery run through it, destroying it in totality. The eons it took to create the balance of nature that was this little creek - this beautiful work of biologically precise art, teeming with life and nurturing elements… was laid to waste by the hands, boots, machines and greed of this corporation. The creek at Yellow Finch is just one of the thousands, if not millions of exquisite and necessary waterways the MVP has run roughshod through. Each of these violations reinforces the need to oppose the forces that seek to plunder the natural world for profit.
Appalachia’s Marcellus and Utica shale fields are the third largest of the world’s reserves. Many more pipelines are on their way: MVP’s Southgate and Williams’ Southeast Supply Enhancement Project are on the horizon.
Photos courtesy of Appalachians Against Pipelines unless otherwise noted.
Please donate to the legal defense fund for pipeline fighters: bit.ly/AppLegalDefense. Protectors face expensive legal charges and intimidation tactics.
Appalachia's Mountain Valley Pipeline Crime Scene bears witness to the ongoing harms MVP is committing. Both free & paid subscribers will receive all posts. Paid subscribers’ funds will be donated to the Appalachian Legal Defense Fund (link above).
Outstanding reporting, as always, Deborah. Should be required reading in all Virginia (and WVA and NC) environmental science classes.
Ooh. Thanks for the reminder to hit the donate button.