By Mike Tony [email protected]
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — “There’s no mountain there anymore. They took the forest away.”
Suzanne Vance’s resigned voice carried above the gravel crunching under her Honda Ridgeline on the access road near the edge of her Lewis County property.
On her right was a 125-foot-wide deforested right-of-way for the Mountain Valley Pipeline. The right-of-way stretched down a steep slope in the headwater valley of Second Big Run, a stream that showed no signs of aquatic life during her walk through it earlier on a cloudy May afternoon.
Vance says deforestation and mountain removal to clear way for the pipe have wreaked havoc on the farm that’s been in her family for 120 years. Tree-clearing that began in 2018 has resulted in road washouts and sedimentation driving fish out of Second Big Run.
Vance recalled four major and many smaller floods in the past five years as she waded through Second Big Run.
“You don’t even want to be in the back of my valley in your pickup truck,” Vance said about area flooding during a morning drive along Oil Creek Road, an artery winding through rural Lewis County dotted with “high water” and “low water bridge” signs. “You could get washed away.”