Appalachian Voices are speaking out about solar energy

From Appalachian Voices in Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia & West Virginia

Dear Colleagues and Friends, Join Us on November 4th ~

Thank you for signing up to learn more about the Appalachian Solar Finance Fund (SFF), a new program to jump-start commercial and institutional solar projects in coal-impacted communities throughout Central Appalachia! We’re excited to announce that the program will launch on Thursday, November 4 with a webinar at noon Eastern Time and invite you to join! Please RSVP to attend.

The SFF will use a recent $1.5 million ARC POWER Initiative award to deploy select subgrant awards for solar projects on nonprofit and public buildings. The SFF also will facilitate competitive technical assistance contracts for solar installations on commercial enterprises and will develop additional investment and credit enhancement strategies to unlock more solar deployment in the region.

During this webinar, attendees will learn about the program’s available financing tools, applicant eligibility criteria and the application process for entities and developers seeking funding for solar projects. Members of the SFF Executive Committee will discuss the history of the fund, its purpose and goals, and the structure of the program.

Speakers include the following four (4) involved individuals:

>> Adam Wells, Regional Director of Community & Economic Development, Appalachian Voices

>> Hannah Vargason, Associate Director of Strategic Initiatives, Partner Community Capital

>> Marc Palmer, Co-Founder and CEO, New Resource Solutions

>> Andrew Crosson, CEO, Invest Appalachia

The presentation will be followed by a Q&A. Commercial, government and nonprofit building owners and facilities managers, and solar developers and installation professionals are encouraged to attend and bring questions about the process. The public is also welcome to attend to learn more about the program and how it works.

RSVP to join us on November 4th! I’m looking forward to seeing you there!

Cheers, Autumn Long
Appalachian Solar Finance Fund Project Manager

RSVP

Protecting mountains, rivers and streams in WV & VA

Announcement from Wild Virginia, WV Rivers Coalition, et al., March 10, 2021

Learn about the specific actions you can take this month to help stop the Mountain Valley Pipeline and protect our water.

Presenters will explain why this pipeline is so catastrophic for ecosystems, endangered species, public lands, directly-impacted communities, and the climate at large. You will have a chance to hear from directly-impacted landowners, grassroots leaders, and lawyers fighting the project.

We will share where MVP stands today, what could happen if it is put into service, and how your action is essential before March 22nd to stop that from ever occurring. Learn how to submit a public comment or motion to intervene on MVP’s request to change the crossing method for 180 streams and wetlands.

We will provide background information, talking points, and opportunities to ask questions. Your voice is a valuable and needed addition to the public record. In addition to technical comments and filings, public testimony is a crucial part of the campaign against the pipeline — especially if you have direct, personal connections to the land and water being harmed.

Whether this is your first time tuning into the MVP fight or you have resisted this project since the beginning, your voice is needed now.

Please consider joining Wild Virginia, POWHR Coalition (Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights), Appalachian Voices and West Virginia Rivers Coalition as they explain why this pipeline is so dangerous, and what you can do about it.

This online event will take place Tuesday, March 16, from 6:30 – 7:30 PM EDT.

Clean streams need protection — perpetual vigilance is essential

FERC halts MVP in WV & VA

Press Release from Doug Jackson (Sierra Club), Cat McCue (Appalachian Voices), and Jared Margolis (Center for Biological Diversity), 10/16/2019

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Late yesterday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) ordered Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC to halt construction activities along the entire 303-mile route of the fracked-gas project. FERC’s order is in response to the project losing key permits under the Endangered Species Act, and allows MVP to do only the work necessary to stabilize the right-of-way in previously disturbed areas. This represents a significant challenge to a project that is already facing numerous hurdles and self-inflicted wounds, including the announcements last week that MVP must pay a multi-million dollar fine and had two of their necessary permits revoked.

However, FERC’s action falls short of its enforcement responsibilities in two crucial areas: FERC leaves it up to MVP to define what they consider “stabilization,” and FERC appears to allow MVP to self-regulate on whether such activities would harass, harm, or kill endangered species. MVP has already shown they will try to get around a construction suspension by defining some pipeline construction activities as necessary for stabilization, and this order appears to allow MVP to determine for themselves the extent to which these activities continue to harm endangered species.

The project has been controversial since it was first announced, and a petition against it and the nearby Atlantic Coast Pipeline launched just two months ago has already garnered more than 75,000 signatures.

Elly Benson, Senior Attorney with the Sierra Club:

“MVP has repeatedly violated environmental safeguards, clean water protections, and plain common sense in their construction of this fracked gas pipeline. We have known all along that their plans for this pipeline are disastrous for the endangered species, streams, and communities in its path, and we’re glad to see FERC finally order them to stop construction along the entire route. However, FERC must not allow MVP to continue installing pipeline under the guise of stabilization, as MVP has been doing under the limited suspension put in place in August.

“We know we can’t trust the polluting corporations behind this dirty, dangerous pipeline to do what’s best for wildlife, the climate, or our communities, so FERC must not allow MVP to determine the extent to which their work continues to harm endangered species. Letting MVP self-police on defining ‘stabilization’ and harming endangered species is like asking the fox to guard the henhouse – it’s an abdication of FERC’s responsibilities.”

David Sligh, Conservation Director for Wild Virginia:

“The command that Mountain Valley cease all construction immediately is appropriate and necessary to meet the law. However, FERC has previously allowed work that is clearly construction to be done under the guise that it is ‘stabilization.’ The Commission must now act responsibly and clearly prohibit all activities that are not absolutely necessary to protect the environment. FERC must no longer play deceptive games that allow further destruction from a project that cannot protect our resources and may never be completed.”

Anne Havemann, General Counsel, Chesapeake Climate Action Network:

“As we’ve said all along, MVP must stop all construction on this project before even more damage is done. We’re glad to see FERC implement the court’s decision and order an immediate stop to construction. We further urge the Commission to make it absolutely clear that construction under the guise of stabilization will not be allowed.”

Peter Anderson, Virginia Program Manager, Appalachian Voices:

“FERC’s order to cease Mountain Valley Pipeline construction is a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t undo the harm that has been wrought over the past year and a half, as water resources, forests, farms and habitat have been destroyed by illegal construction practices. FERC should not trust MVP to interpret what is appropriate ‘stabilization’ for this unnecessary project; it is in the developer’s interest to keep plowing ahead. Rather, FERC must comply with the Endangered Species Act and ensure MVP does not harm any listed species.”

Jason Rylander, Senior Endangered Species Counsel, Defenders of Wildlife:

“FERC’s stop work order is welcome news, but the fracked gas Mountain Valley Pipeline should never have been approved without rigorous review of the impacts of this environmentally damaging project on local people, wildlife, and the climate. Fast tracking projects like this is always a mistake and now the chickens are coming home to roost.”

Roberta Bondurant, member of Preserve Bent Mountain:

“The public deserves FERC’s exacting and credible review of MVP’s status report and any continuing activity on the right of way. Monitors will continue to vigilantly report MVP activity — whether or not in the guise of ‘stabilization’ — that degrades habitat of threatened and endangered species or is otherwise outside FERC and Fourth Circuit directives.”

Jared Margolis, Senior Attorney, Center for Biological Diversity:

“We’re relieved pipeline construction is stopped for now, but this climate and wildlife killing project should be permanently scrapped. A polluting fossil fuel pipeline has no place in today’s world.”

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UPDATE from Progress Not Pipelines

Last week, the Virginia attorney general secured a $2.15 million settlement against the MVP pipeline company for more than 300 violations of state water quality requirements.

But, we must keep the pressure on. FERC must stop this pipeline once and for all, and also stop the fracked-gas Atlantic Coast Pipeline that would run some 600 miles through West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina over the beloved Blue Ridge Mountains, through farms, wildlife habitat and water supplies. Both projects would worsen the impacts of climate change.

Please keep sharing our petition with your friends, neighbors and community — which currently has over 75,000 signatures.

And THANK YOU!

VA Water Board gives approval to MVP & ACP

Over vigorous opposition from water experts and citizens, Virginia water board approves conditional permit for Atlantic Coast Pipeline, voting 4 to 3

CONTACTS: Cat McCue, Director of Communications, cat@appvoices.org
and Peter Anderson, Virginia Program Manager, peter@appvoices.org

The Virginia State Water Control Board today approved a heavily amended certification for the proposed fracked-gas Atlantic Coast Pipeline that is conditional on getting outstanding information from state regulators about the project’s impacts to water quality. The board voted 4-3 for the certification after a day of vigorous vocal opposition from citizens who have been fighting the pipeline for years. By some accounts, it was the most active, controversial water board meeting in decades.

Yesterday, some 100 people spoke against the project – mostly landowners and experts opposed to the pipeline based on its unprecedented impacts on streams, rivers, drinking water supplies, wetlands and groundwater in the commonwealth. In addition, the state received some 15,000 comments from citizens this summer, overwhelmingly in opposition to the pipeline.

The certificate approved today will apparently not be effective until the Department of Environmental Quality has provided all outstanding information and the board determines the project would not violate clean water standards. The move follows the board’s vote last week approving the equally controversial fracked-gas Mountain Valley Pipeline, but without the conditional approval.

Appalachian Voices along with other organizations and countless community groups and citizens along the routes of the proposed pipelines have been fighting the controversial projects since they were announced in 2014. Thousands have voiced their opposition to both these pipelines based on evidence that they cannot be built without violating the federal Clean Water Act and the board’s obligation under Virginia law. Appalachian Voices and many others highlighted repeatedly that DEQ failed to provide the board with critical information, including erosion and stormwater control plans and analysis of individual water crossings. This information is fundamental for the board to make a rational decision about the projects’ impacts to our waters.

Peter Anderson, Virginia Program Manager of Appalachian Voices, a leading nonprofit advocate for healthy communities and just economies in Appalachia:

“We are somewhat encouraged by the depth and scope of the board’s discussion about several critical issues today and their apparent recognition of the thousands of citizen voices they’ve heard from over the years, but we are disappointed they did not deny this deficient certification and remand it back to the Department of Environmental Quality for a thorough analysis.

“We are also very disappointed the board rejected a formal petition it received yesterday to reconsider its approval of the equally deficient Mountain Valley Pipeline last week.

“We applaud the efforts of several board members who expressed concern that the draft ACP certification would not provide reasonable assurance, as required by law, that water quality would be protected. We particularly commend members Roberta Kellam, Nissa Dean and Robert Wayland who cast the three dissenting votes.

“We are confident the record demonstrates construction of the pipelines would violate the law. On Friday, we filed a legal challenge to the Mountain Valley Pipeline, and we are considering all options for this project as well. If either pipeline company breaks ground, citizens along the routes are prepared to watchdog every action, along every mile, every day of construction and afterwards, and compel agencies to act when violations inevitably occur.”

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Wild Virginia Sues Virginia State Water Control Board Over Approval of MVP Permit

Press Release from David Sligh, Wild Virginia, December 8, 2017

Today, Wild Virginia has joined allies in filing suit to challenge the legality of the State Water Control Board’s decision to issue a water quality certification for the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

The lawsuit, filed by attorneys with Appalachian Mountain Advocates in Richmond’s U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, asserts that the Board has failed base its decision on adequate and complete information and, therefore, lacks a rational basis for its action. All parties admit that vital information and analyses were missing at this time yet the Board endorsed DEQ’s recommendation to approve the rushed permit decision.

“The Board and DEQ cannot determine that the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline will not violate Virginia’s water quality standards without doing detailed and cumulative water quality analyses,” said Misty Boos, Wild Virginia’s Director.

Members of the Board did express doubt that DEQ’s proposal to rely on the Army Corps of Engineers’ Nationwide 12 permit for protection of water quality at stream and wetland crossings would be adequate to meet state standards. However, the Board’s revised certification, which attempts to reserve its authority to address those concerns through another, separate certification process is inadequate. That decision still sidesteps the real issue – that the Board had a responsibility to protect our waters from the whole range of damages this pipeline would cause,” Boos stated.

The Mountain Valley Pipeline project would send fracked gas from West Virginia to southern Virginia through a 42-inch pipe and would involve blasting and excavating through hundreds of streams, including some of the most sensitive and high-value aquatic habitats in the region. It would slice through the headwaters of the Roanoke River watershed endangering water supplies for Roanoke City and Roanoke County and threatens to pollute and disrupt flows in wells and springs that thousands of rural residents rely on.

“The DEQ’s erosion and sediment control plans and stormwater control plans are incomplete and have not been presented to the Board,” said David Sligh, Wild Virginia’s Conservation Director. “Karst analyses are incomplete. Data related to specific waterbody crossings is non-existent. The Nationwide 12 permit has not yet been authorized and determined to be applicable. The procedure is not based on sound science and is legally flawed. We cannot accept this betrayal of our trust and our rights without challenge,” Sligh stated.

Appalachian Mountain Advocates is representing Wild Virginia in the lawsuit along with the Sierra Club, Appalachian Voices, the Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resource Defense Council and Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

See the Petition to the U.S. Court of Appeals (Fourth Circuit) here.

Sincerely,

Misty Boos, Director
Wild Virginia, P.O. Box 1065
Charlottesville, VA 22902

misty@wildvirginia.org
www.wildvirginia.org

Charlottesville, Virginia, October 28, 2017

From an Article by Lakshmi Fjord, Appalachian Voices, October 20, 2017

>>> Our guest author today is Lakshmi Fjord, a Visiting Scholar in Anthropology at the University of Virginia who lives in Charlottesville and owns property in Yogaville in Buckingham County, Va., where a giant compressor station would be built as part of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

RE: A People’s Tribunal on Environmental Justice and Fracked Gas

Date: October 28, 11:45 a.m. to 7 p.m., City Space, Charlottesville

Special Guests: Featuring nationally acclaimed community activist Lois Gibbs, environmental attorney and toxicologist Adrienne Hollis, as well as anthropologist of indigenous and environmental justice James Igoe.

For the past three years, the focus of my volunteer advocacy with Friends of Buckingham has been to research and document evidence to counter the blatant omissions in Dominion’s documents of required information on population, historic cultural resources, water and geo-hazards of the Union Hill site. Those documents include Dominion’s applications to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, to Buckingham County for a special use permit, and to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality for an air permit to allow toxic pollution.

Who are the people of Union Hill and what unique harms do they face?

To piece together the evidence of black history in Buckingham County for public comments and hearings, I oversaw our door-to-door survey of 99 households located within one mile of the site, researched historic blogs and the Special Collections library at the University of Virginia, and relied heavily on the research of Charles White in Confederate records and Smithsonian files. I applied for and we received “Most Endangered Historic Place” listing by Preservation Virginia in 2016 due to the proposed ACP, and collaborated with the organization to apply for historic register nomination by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

We learned from these combined efforts that the population of Union Hill is five times greater than what Dominion reported to FERC. Union Hill’s actual population qualifies it as a “suburban” neighborhood under the federal government’s pipeline safety standards. This means that Dominion must apply more safety measures on the pipeline in Union Hill, including using thicker pipes and installing shut-off values closer together. But Dominion’s documentation makes no change from its construction plans for rural areas, with thinner pipes and farther distances between the shut-off valves. The higher standards would be especially critical in Buckingham County, which has a 120-year history of earthquakes. It was the epicenter of the August 2011 quake registering 5.8 on the Richter scale that was felt up and down the East Coast, and the center of two quakes registering 2.3 just this year.

Union Hill is 85% African-American, one-third of whom are descendants of Freedmen. We learned they are disproportionately elderly and children – the result of young adults migrating to more “equal opportunity” urban centers, leaving their children in the care of their grandparents, and, in their words, “the clean air, water and quiet of Union Hill.” The residents rely on single-source aquifers for individual well water that would be next to a massive underground natural gas network of huge pipelines under extremely high pressure where the ACP would connect with the existing interstate Transco pipeline.

Most hazardous to the community would be the “blow-downs” – deliberate or accidental release of toxic emissions because of too much pressure in the compressor system. A recent study by Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project has conclusive evidence of a range of health impacts from exposure to the “toxic cocktail” of fracked-gas chemicals from blow-downs at compressor stations one-fifth the size of the one proposed here. Union Hill has higher than average air quality due its remote and largely agricultural characteristics. Under state regulations, the pure air quality perversely allows Dominion to emit toxic pollution at higher rates at its proposed compressor station, thus punishing those living as close as 150 feet on all sides for being good stewards of their heritage lands. This exemplifies the cost-benefits of racism in Buckingham County and Virginia.

These erasures of the Virginians who would bear the disproportionate impacts of the ACP’s fracked-gas infrastructure echo the erasures of records of enslavement (wills, Freedmen purchases of freedom that named owners’ names) when vigilantes burned down the Buckingham County Courthouse in 1869 following a committee vote in the U.S. House of Representatives for the 15th Amendment giving former slaves the right to vote.

Both erasures are meant to deny these Virginians federal legal protections, as well as to deny restitution for life-long harms directly caused by those who profit by exploiting African-Americans’ natural resources — in their persons under slavery, and now their clean air, water and soil.

A People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Environmental Justice Impacts of Fracked Gas Infrastructure: Why now and what for?

The purpose of the People’s Tribunal is to bring together pipeline-related testimonies from across Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina impacted by the ACP or the equally risky and unjust Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). We aim to document and record in one informative narrative the voices of the people most impacted by these proposed pipelines, the scientific data about pipeline hazards and impacts, and the economics showing the projects are not needed for any public good, making the communities’ forced sacrifices that much more egregious.

Our event on October 28 has evolved to be part of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on the Human Rights Impacts of Fracking and also to serve our immediate public informational needs and for next steps organizing against the pipelines. It will follow a people’s tribunal format of testimonies presided over by judges who are experts in the fields of human rights, environmental justice and community impacts from toxic infrastructure:

>>> Lois Gibbs: Founder of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice and renowned activist whose efforts in the 70s to force the cleanup of toxic waste in her community in New York led to the creation of the federal Superfund law and earned her the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. Gibbs remains at the forefront of environmental activism in the U.S.

>>> Dr. Adrienne L. Hollis: Director of Federal Policy at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, in Washington, DC. Dr. Hollis is an experienced environmental toxicologist as well as an environmental attorney. She has worked with a number of community organizations and has a wealth of experience in environmental justice issues.

>>> Dr. James Igoe: Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at UVa. He has conducted field research on biodiversity conservation, community-based development, and grassroots social movements in Tanzania, Pine Ridge, South Dakota, and New Orleans Louisiana. His work focuses on the intersections of indigenous social movements, environmental justice, and nature conservation.

These renowned civic leaders will listen to testimonies, ask questions, and at the close of will sequester themselves for an hour to write a statement with their joint conclusions and recommendations. While they meet, the rest of the participants will break into facilitated small groups to plan next steps to take together.

This will be live-streamed on our Facebook event page, audiotaped for podcasts, and videotaped for short and longer YouTube videos – and the entire testimony video will be sent to the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on Fracking.

The idea to hold the People’s Tribunal is my hoped-for means to bring to public awareness the link between that lack of local and state protection against white supremacist violence on that fateful day and the slow, steady violence to the African-American people of Union Hill from the 1720s right up to today. For this community, we hope the tribunal will make clear that the threats they face, as do all people directly impacted by the ACP and MVP, are losses of key basic human rights protections agreed upon and signed to uphold by the U.S. and all signatories to United Nations’ treaties and conventions — that is, the rights to health, to clean air, water and food, to public participation, and to protection from social losses to their communities.

By the same token, the U.S. National Environmental Policy Act requires that key environmental justice considerations are considered in new toxic polluting infrastructure to stop the disproportionate burdens of these risks and harms to minority and low-income communities. Such factors were not considered by FERC when approving the ACP and MVP.

Why is this event necessary to a just and civil society?

Environmental justice is in our tribunal title because a disproportionate number of communities living along the routes of both proposed pipelines exemplify the cost-benefits of environmental injustice. It is cheaper and less problematic for the pipeline developers to route these projects where people are rural (a high percentage have no internet or cell phone coverage), African-American, Appalachian and Native-American. Why? These are “expected losses” in U.S. society, where such racial and economic discrimination by corporate profit seekers is no longer shocking, nor mobilizing for the vast majority. These largely disenfranchised Americans have less access to public information, networking, the public debate and political power.

For more than three years, people along these routes have made every effort to participate in the public process by bringing their testimonies as evidence against their approval: Buckingham compressor station special use permit, public comments to FERC on its environmental study, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality on the required state water permits, to their local elected officials and to the public.

Yet on Friday, October 13, in a closed-door session, FERC voted 2-to-1 to issue certificates for both the pipelines. In a dissent – extremely rare for FERC — Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur demonstrated the evidentiary and informational value of these comments by impacted landowners, economists, lawyers, scientists, and medical experts by using them as the bases of her dissent. For those on the ground opposed to these pipelines, her statement demonstrated not only the worth of this publicly submitted evidence, but its availability and applicability to FERC decision-making.

These pipeline fights have forged coalitions of allies across diverse geographies, races, ethnicities, and economic statuses while also causing cruel fissures in common bonds by pitting communities against each other when trying to move routes. All impacted people and community groups in such a long and harsh process face mental health issues of burnout and traumatic stress from threats hanging over us. Peer and group support is a key strategy to stay in the fight.

Which is why, following the testimony phase, when the judges write their statements, we will hold the next-steps organizing discussion that this cross-geography gathering will allow. After years of unremitting distress on individuals, families, and communities harassed by land agents to give up their property rights, facing threats of toxic air pollution, fires, and explosions, this tribunal is meant to join us together in person in solidarity.