Compression: contesting integrity and uncertainty along the Mountain Valley Pipeline

• In Event: Science, Knowledge & Technology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4: (Infra)structures

Abstract

This paper examines how actors navigate the inherent uncertainty of pipeline integrity through practices of sensing and documentation along the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). I compare two forms of knowledge production: Appalachian communities’ visual monitoring of construction practices, and the hydrostatic test, an industry standard that uses controlled breakdown to identify material weaknesses. Drawing on 17 months of ethnographic fieldwork, 51 interviews, and archival research on the emergence of pressure testing, I argue that hydrostatic testing operates through a knowledge practice of compression: a technique for managing unruly materials, futures, and publics by condensing distributed uncertainties into singular, manipulable events. The 2024 rupture of MVP during its own hydrostatic test reveals how industrial epistemologies privilege control over care, while community practices of documenting visible neglect become political practices in their own right.

Author

• Margaret Davis, University of Southern California