Save Our Water
Who are we? We are Save Monroe, Inc., a 501(c)3 non-profit community group of citizens, in rural Monroe County, WV. Please help us protect our water, land, homes, farms, culture, property rights,--and our very lives--- from the dangerous Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP).
Our lawyer has given us real hope of stopping MVP once and for all. But we have exhausted our personal resources during the last 2 1/2 years of fighting back. Every (tax deductible) dollar you donate to Save Monroe, Inc. will go toward paying legal fees. Any amount you can afford will help us.
Interested? Please Read on...
The Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), first proposed in 2014, would be a 300+ mile long, 42- inch diameter pipeline project tearing through and destroying land across a wide swath of WV and VA in order to carry fracked gas for export overseas. Pipelines of this size have never been built on this very steep type of terrain, and are considered by scientists to be experimental, highly dangerous, and vulnerable to ruptures, leaks, and explosions.
Building a pipeline of this size requires blasting a massive trench through limestone bedrock, the layer of subsoil where our water lies. This pristine mountain water at the top of the continental divide bubbles up from artesian wells in fragile Karst topography. Monroe County folks get their drinking water from wells and springs that tap this aquifer. Our water is world renowned for sweetness, even winning international awards (Sweet Springs Valley Water ). Construction of this pipeline will contaminate, disrupt and destroy our water supply. We can't drink gas.
MVP seeks to rip a 125 foot wide easement through our hayfields, farms, and forests, coming within feet of some homes and forever destroying land and water which was set aside by our forefathers as the Appalachian Trail and The Jefferson National Forest. Our woods have every imaginable songbird. Our valleys are filled with family farms dating back generations and some of the most friendly, lovely, gentle, kind people you will ever meet. We literally are "the land of milk and honey", with many organic dairy farms and apiaries: 474 square miles without a traffic light--now at risk of losing our way of life to an invading Goliath.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has the power to permit or reject this project. Unfortunately, FERC never met a pipeline they didn't like. If approved, MVP will be able to take our land for "public convenience and necessity" through eminent domain. At this time, two thirds of the landowners on the route are facing having their property taken against their will. Ironically, they must continue to pay taxes on land they can no longer use, land whose value has drastically plummeted due to the permanent easement.
The truth is that there is NO " public benefit" for Monroe County from this pipeline. It cuts the county (and many farms) in half without one single breath of gas being used here. The private corporations who comprise MVP are sending this gas to coastal export terminals for quick shipment overseas, where they can make many more millions than they can here. They want to make money at the expense of all American citizens.
We have been battling MVP valiantly and persistently. We have written our state and national legislators. We have attended meetings with MVP and FERC. We have peacefully protested. We have followed all the proper guidelines for expressing our unanimous rejection of this project.
Now we have hired an attorney who has a real case. Our lawyer has given us real hope of stopping MVP once and for all. But we are salt of the earth farmers and small town folks, who have exhausted personal resources during the last 2 1/2 years of fighting MVP. We need your help! Every (tax deductible) dollar donated to Save Monroe, Inc. will go toward paying legal fees. Any amount you can afford will help us with our plight. Our need is urgent. Our very lives are at stake. Help us fight this dark campaign to take property and water from your fellow Americans. Send whatever you can today and let future generations taste the water from the Sweet Springs, and see Monroe County, WV as it still exists.... Our future is your future. Thank you.
