From Ellen Bouton, “Friends of Nelson” County, VA, October 23, 2017

In an October 23, 2017, blog post, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) says, “The National Environmental Policy Act requires that agencies undertake a robust analysis of reasonable alternatives before making a decision about a proposed project. In the case of these two pipelines, it’s been clear since the beginning that there are cleaner, safer, less destructive, and less expensive alternatives available. Our list of concerns about these two pipelines is long, but here is an overview of the top ten, with more details to come in future blog posts.”

The top ten list is below – see the NRDC post for detailed explanations of each of the ten.

1. Corporate self-dealing

2. No documented need for either pipeline

3. Consumers will pay for these pipelines

4. No analysis of reasonable alternatives

5. No consideration of existing excess pipeline capacity

6. There will be severe risks to clean water

7. There are serious threats to air quality

8. Countless dangers for forests, endangered species, fish nurseries, and public lands that are used for recreation and other purposes

9. Environmental justice is at risk

10. Farmers and other landowners will lose their land

Source: http://friendsofnelson.com/nrdc-outlines-10-reasons-to-stop-mvp-and-acp/

From Peter Anderson, Appalachian Voices, October 26, 2017

Our partners at the Southern Environmental Law Center released this comprehensive 3-pager on ratepayer impacts of the ACP today. Takeaways:

— Dominion has never studied whether the ACP is needed to supply fuel to meet demand of its retail electric customers

— Dominion plans to recover 100% of the cost of the $6 billion pipeline from its captive ratepayers

— The Atlantic Coast Pipeline will actually INCREASE costs for customers rather than cutting costs

Please share: https://www.southernenvironment.org/uploads/words_docs/Price_Shock_Final_draft.pdf

At the time, Buckingham County was 65% African-American and the lowest-income county in Virginia. In this rural county at the exact center of Virginia, I witnessed every day the legacy of plantation slavery that still holds sway. Descendants of former slaves and descendants of plantation owners with the same last names live on either side of the color line on the same lands where their ancestors had been slaves and masters.

I became involved in local black communities and learned that it was taboo to speak about “the old times” (slavery) or to voice publicly that the racial discrimination at every level of socioeconomics, culture and politics was “racism.” It is hard for us outsiders to fathom how ingrained self-protectiveness must be if one lives where relatives were held in bondage and brutally punished since the 1600s. Few outsiders are told about the various forms of retribution still taking place against local African-Americans who name racial discriminatory actions as such. This is what occurred when Dominion Resources set its sights on Buckingham County a few years back for what would be the sole compressor station in Virginia for its multi-state proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP).

Dominion Resources is the parent company of Dominion Energy, the public utility monopoly in Virginia. Dominion Energy provides neither gas service nor electricity to most of Buckingham County because it’s unprofitable to do so in such a rural area. (An electric cooperative provides the service.) Yet, this is the site Dominion chose to build a huge, highly polluting propulsion and storage facility to transmit volatile fracked natural gas at extreme pressure over 200 miles in each direction. The company secretly purchased 68 acres of land with a large wetland from descendants of plantation owners at 10 times the market value in the middle of Union Hill, a historic Freedmen community. And now, those heritage lands owned by Freedmen descendants that have tied their generations to this land and place have lost most of their value.

After the veil of secrecy was lifted and we learned the intent of the purchasers, concerned residents formed Friends of Buckingham to protect and preserve the people and natural resources of the county and to work for clean, sustainable energy sources instead of outdated, toxic-producing fossil fuel development.

P.S. I hope to see you in Charlottesville on Saturday. L. F.

(Appalachian Voices)