06/04/2026
This past Friday, frontline Southwest Virginia community members and advocates from the Protect Our Water Heritage Rights Coalition, Preserve Craig, Inc., Preserve Giles County, ARTivism Virginia, and Virginia Conservation Network visited with Virginia Lieutenant Governor Ghazala Hashmi in Richmond to discuss our concerns about the proposed MVP Boost project and the Swann Compressor Station that MVP wants to construct in Elliston, Virginia. We brought a crew from SWVA and also were able to dial in organizers and neighbors from Eastern Montgomery County, via Zoom!
As a state senator, Lt. Gov Hashmi played a significant role in establishing the Virginia Environmental Justice Act of 2020, and helped advocate for communities along MVP and MVP Southgate’s paths by opposing air and water permits needed from Virginia DEQ in 2021. The attention to environmental justice issues surrounding MVP Southgate’s proposed Lambert Compressor Station in Chatham, VA – and the presence of new legal EJ protections – were key to the Air Pollution Control Board’s denial of that project’s air permit, and resulted in the Lambert facility never being built.
Our coalition is continuing the long fight for environmental justice communities threatened by expansion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline and working to make sure MVP Boost and the Swann Compressor Station are never built! This project would saddle an underserved community in Eastern Montgomery County with dangerous air pollutants, and would add volatility to an already unsafe mainline project that tore through Elliston along its 303-mile path.
We’d like to thank Lt. Gov Hashmi and her staff for discussing these important concerns and for continuing to be an environmental justice advocate!
