Not Another Power Plant in CT ... or ... WV ...!

>> From an Article by Mike Tony, Charleston Gazette Mail, October 22, 2921

Feedback was divided between welcoming potential economic benefits and decrying feared environmental perils at a public comment meeting on a proposed air quality permit for a natural gas-fired power plant in Monongalia County.

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection held the meeting virtually Tuesday evening on the permit requested by Longview Power’s Mountain State Clean Energy LLC for the facility planned to be located immediately north of the Longview coal-fired plant in Maidsville.

The project is slated to be a gas-fired, combined-cycle plant that will supply electricity to the power grid, linking to it via an interconnection used by the coal-fired plant. The West Virginia Division of Air Quality’s preliminary evaluation found that the project as proposed will meet all applicable state rules and federal regulations, prompting the division’s preliminary determination to approve the air quality application.

Area union officials pushed state environmental regulators to keep leaning in that direction. They argue that constructing the plant would create critical jobs for their members. “[T]he job opportunities [are] huge. I would like to add that the jobs created will be good-paying jobs, with important retirement and health care benefits,” said Natalie Stone, representative of the Morgantown-based North Central West Virginia Building Trades Council.

The proposed gas-fired plant is projected to emit 5.13 million tons of greenhouse gases, 321 tons of nitrogen oxide, 276 tons of carbon monoxide and 210 tons of particulate matter per year, according to a permit application prepared for the DEP by Ambient Air Quality Services Inc., a Pennsylvania-based air quality consulting firm.

Opponents of the project objected to what they said were troubling discrepancies and inadequate air quality protection measures in the proposed permit as well as the project’s proposed greenhouse climate emissions that would contribute to the climate crisis.

The International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organization consisting of 30 member countries, said in May that investors should not fund any new coal, oil or natural gas projects if the world is to reach net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.

Earth must meet the mid-century deadline to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius and avert the worst effects of climate change, the agency reiterated in a road map for the global energy sector that included the new recommendation to end all new fossil fuel projects.

James Kotcon, chairman of the West Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club’s conservation committee, observed that a draft permit for the facility lists the facility’s total electrical generating capacity as 1,300 megawatts, while a DEP preliminary determination and fact sheet for the facility notes that the facility’s electricity generation capability is 1,200 megawatts.

DEP spokesman Terry Fletcher indicated after the meeting that the figure was an approximate value, adding that the output will vary based on power efficiencies and operating conditions. A PowerPoint presentation that Division of Air Quality engineer Edward Andrews showed describing the project indicated that the plant would be a 1,200-megawatt facility.

Area resident Duane Nichols argued that it would be environmentally unjust for the plant to be located near West Virginia University medical facilities, health centers and other sites of importance. Two facilities Nichols mentioned, the WVU Eye Institute and Mountaineer Field, are roughly 10 miles away from the proposed facility location. “You can’t find a worse location in the entire state of West Virginia,” Nichols contended.

Those anticipated emission levels are all well above federal significance levels, subjecting the plant to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Prevention of Significant Deterioration regulations. That designation requires installation of emissions-limitation technology, air quality analysis, an additional impacts analysis assessing the effects of air, ground and water pollution, as well as public comment on permits and citizen enforcement actions against sources not complying with their permits.

Project opponents questioned the “clean energy” part of Mountain State Clean Energy’s name during the meeting. “When I see a company that calls themselves Mountain State Clean Energy and then ask for 5 million tons of greenhouse gas [emissions], who do they think they’re fooling?” Kotcon asked.

Mountain State Clean Energy will need to apply for a water pollution permit for the site or modify an existing one to include the new gas-fired turbine, Fletcher said.
Located 3,000 feet west of the Monongahela River, the site is slated to operate two pipeline-gas compressor units. The application indicates that no greenhouse gas emissions will be associated with starting up, shutting down or operating the units. The proposed start-up date for the facility is Jan. 1, 2025, according to the DEP.

Mountain State Clean Energy LLC formally changed its name from Longview Power II LLC in November of 2020. That name change came seven months after the West Virginia Public Service Commission issued a certificate to the company to construct and operate the gas-fired facility and a 70-megawatt utility-scale solar facility — 20 megawatts to be located in West Virginia and 50 megawatts in Pennsylvania. The commission also approved construction and installation of a 500-kilovolt electric transmission line extending approximately three quarters of a mile north from the gas-fired facility.

Longview Power II LLC and Longview Renewable Power LLC, a separate company granted the solar siting certificate that subsequently changed its name to Mountain State Renewables LLC, estimated that the cost to construct the gas-fired facility would be $1.1 billion, according to the Public Service Commission. The Monongalia County Commission approved a 30-year, $58 million payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement with the Longview parties in December 2020.

The Division of Air Quality will take public comments until Mon., Nov. 1 at 5 p.m. and subsequently take final action on the application. Written comments may be emailed to Edward.S.Andrews@wv.gov, with “Mountain State Clean Energy Comments” in the subject line, or mailed to Edward Andrews, WV Department of Environmental Protection, Division of Air Quality, 601 57th Street, SE, Charleston, WV 25304.

Additional information on the project proposal can be found at https://dep.wv.gov/daq/permitting/Pages/NSR-Permit-Applications.aspx

Joe Biden is upfront with appointees and intentions

From an Article by Dino Grandoni and Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post, January 15, 2021

President-elect Joe Biden added more than a half-dozen climate staffers to his White House team Thursday, drawing from the ranks of green groups, environmental justice advocates and former Democratic administration officials to grow an inner circle that will help him try to slash the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The new hires include David J. Hayes, who served as Interior deputy secretary under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama; Cecilia Martinez, a prominent environmental justice advocate based in Minneapolis who advised the transition team; and Stef Feldman, a top Biden campaign aide who helped craft his climate plan. They will work with several incoming Cabinet officials new to Biden’s orbit, including North Carolina environmental regulator Michael S. Regan, picked to run the Environmental Protection Agency, and Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.), set to serve as interior secretary.

The incoming White House team — which also includes former secretary of state John F. Kerry and former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, along with Obama administration veterans in the National Security Council and the White House Counsel’s Office — represents the most robust climate-focused group assembled in the West Wing.

“These qualified, diverse and experienced appointees share the president and vice president-elect’s view that there is no greater challenge facing our country and our world than climate change,” the transition team said in a statement. “From marshaling every part of our government, working directly with communities, and harnessing the forces of science these appointees will be instrumental in utilizing all the tools at the incoming administration’s disposal to address climate change head on.”

Biden, set to take office in less than a week, will try to execute a far-reaching strategy to embed climate action across government agencies and in legislation on Capitol Hill. He has also pledged to address the disproportionate pollution burden carried by poor and minority neighborhoods.

In a recent interview, John Podesta, who helped spearhead Obama’s second-term climate agenda as senior counselor to the president, noted that Biden has assembled more expertise on the subject than any of his predecessors. Podesta said, the president-elect is building out the White House staff on both the international and domestic sides. “It shows how central climate change is to Biden’s foreign and security policy, just as it is to his domestic and economic policy,” he said.

Biden wants to ban all new drilling on public lands and waters. There are multiple reasons why that will be hard to do.

Martinez will play a major role in tackling pollution disparities as senior director for environmental justice at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ).

In an interview in July, Martinez said addressing the acute impact poor and minority neighborhoods often face from pollution needs to be “a central focus of CEQ.”

The Biden administration’s initiative on environmental justice “needs to really have some teeth to it so that the different federal agencies not only develop their plans and collaborate, but there is accountability,” she added.

David J. Hayes, a former deputy secretary of the Interior under the Obama administration, will be Biden’s special assistant for climate policy.

Martinez is a newcomer to Washington but the new lineup includes some longtime bureaucratic veterans such as Hayes, who will serve as special assistant to the president for climate policy. Hayes spearheaded Interior’s renewable energy development plans and its efforts to address climate change impacts in the Arctic under Obama, before joining the New York School of Law’s State Energy and Environmental Impact Center. From that perch, he helped organize several legal challenges by Democratic attorneys general to the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda.

Maggie Thomas, a former climate adviser to two of Biden’s former rivals for the presidency, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), will serve as chief of staff in the Office of Domestic Climate Policy.

Thomas helped found a green group, Evergreen Action, which pushed Democrats to adopt pieces of Inslee’s comprehensive climate plan and lent policy chops to the burgeoning youth climate movement.

Feldman, a longtime Biden aide who started as his policy intern when he was vice president and rose to become his 2020 campaign’s policy director, will serve as deputy assistant to Biden.

During the presidential race, she helped get the buy-in of young climate activists, union leaders, environmental justice advocates and former Democratic rivals when writing Biden’s proposal to eliminate carbon pollution from the electric sector by 2035 and to spend $2 trillion over four years to boost clean energy.

Jeff Marootian, who directs the D.C. Department of Transportation, will also join the White House and help oversee future hires as special assistant to the president for climate and science agency personnel.
In recent days, Biden has also announced the return to the White House of two Obama-era officials who worked on energy and climate issues: Melanie Nakagawa, a former aide to Kerry at the State Department, and Megan Ceronsky, a former special assistant and associate counsel to Obama.

§ — Subscribe to the Washington Post for more and updated reporting.

#####…..#####…..#####…..#####…..#####

See also: UN urges nations to scale up climate change adaptation to avoid major economic loss, Emma Newburger, CNBC News, January 14, 2021

Time is running out ...

From an Article by Tara Lohan, The Revelator, January 11, 2021

Shalanda Baker is currently a professor of law, public policy and urban affairs at Northeastern University and cofounder of the Initiative for Energy Justice, where she works on making the clean energy transition more just. Her new book is “Revolutionary Power, An Activist’s Guide to the Energy Transition,” published this month of January 2021.

The Revelator spoke with Prof. Baker about why we can’t solve our current climate crisis by following the same energy playbook and what it means to put various justice concerns first.

Question: “Energy justice” may be a new term for people. How do you define it?

I feel like it’s helpful to distinguish it from environmental justice as well as climate justice. They’re interrelated and, I think, inextricably intertwined.

We had seen landmark environmental legislation passed in the 1970s which largely failed to address energy distributional concerns and largely left communities of color to fend for themselves through regular civil rights claims to sort out those burdens. And that actually didn’t work out.

So the environmental justice movement continues and on their shoulders is the climate justice movement, which very much recognizes that island communities and other communities in the Global South, as well as environmental justice communities including in the United States, will be the first and worst impacted by climate change.

So they’re really working to create policies that respond to that vulnerability.

But energy justice for me is the most hopeful aspect of this because it’s forward looking. To me, it’s about dreaming and saying, “What system can we create that not only remediates or helps to remediate some of that environmental harm, but can make us less vulnerable in the face of climate change?”

Rooftop solar, batteries, things that allow us to bounce back more quickly in the face of climate change — this hopeful terrain of energy policy that is reflective of energy justice principles is where I like to do my work.

Question: What response do you get when you talk about energy justice now?

If you had asked me that six months ago, I would have said that it’s very hard. No one’s listening, it’s terrible.

But since the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the murder of George Floyd, we have seen this sort of awakening, for lack of a better term, with respect to the multiple layers of oppression and inequality that certain communities face.

We know that communities of color are more likely to be environmental justice communities, breathing in toxic fumes. We know that they’re more likely to experience energy burden, paying more of their overall income to meet basic energy needs. And now we know that they’re more likely to die from a pandemic and that the likelihood of having the worst effects of COVID relates back to the energy system.

So now there’s an opening, there’s an opportunity. Since June there’s really been more of a willingness to learn about this — and not in just the typical places, but with policymakers, with folks from departments of energy around the country and attorneys general offices.

Question: Are there examples of energy justice in action you’ve seen around the country?

One is in New York through the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which was signed into law about a year ago and was very much a product of grassroots advocacy. A coalition called NY Renews made sure that that law included a carve-out for environmental justice communities [requiring] that 35% of climate investments have to go back to those communities.

We see similar things in California with Senate Bill 535, which is essentially a redistribution of the benefits of that state’s cap and trade policy to so-called “disadvantaged communities.”

So there are wins here and there, but we have to keep fighting.

Question: You write in your book about how the goal for many activists has been “climate first, energy justice later.” But you advocate for justice first. Why?

Bringing in the voices of folks who’ve been historically colonized and excluded for hundreds of years is just the morally right thing to do.

But I think more and more, we’re starting to understand that our fates are linked. And we cannot leave behind certain squads of the population in pursuit of our own gains. We have to make sure that they have a voice at the table and are able to bring life to their own vision of what the energy system should look like.

Or else we’ll get kicked by it at the end of the day. We’ll be hit by the realization that we’ve left out this entire segment of the population that can’t pay their electricity bills or that now has to move because of climate change. That will ultimately create substantial social costs down the road.

So for me, it’s about making a stronger society. I really want ordinary folks — our aunts or uncles, our friends who are not in energy or environmental law and policy — to engage with these ideas and to see the ways in which energy is such an intimate part of our lives.

I want people to get curious and begin to organize around a just energy future. And to also maybe even get a little upset about the deep injustice that is embedded into not just the fossil fuel system — because that’s a story we know — but into this clean energy transition, where we are not only replicating but in some ways exacerbating inequality.

>>> Tara Lohanis is deputy editor of The Revelator and has worked for more than a decade as a digital editor and environmental journalist focused on the intersections of energy, water and climate. Her work has been published by The Nation, American Prospect, High Country News, Grist, Pacific Standard and others. She is the editor of two books on the global water crisis.

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ...... “now on - trial” ... !

From Michael M. Barrick, Appalachian Chronicle, September 18, 2020

WASHINGTON – Representatives from the VOICES Coalition (Victory Over InFRACKstructure, Clean Energy inStead), a coalition of over of over 350 grassroots activists, environmental leaders, lawyers, and experts, and 250 environmental organizations representing over 35 states, will hold a Virtual People’s Hearing to testify to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC’s) extensive history of bias and abuse against the environment and the people in its approval of pipelines and fracked gas infrastructure.

It is scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 23 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. EDT.

Registration is required for the Webinar. One can register at this link:

bit.ly/RegisterVirtualHearing

Witnesses will share stories about their personal experiences, documenting the many instances in which FERC has skirted critical regulations and laws, infringed on states’ rights, hired biased consultants, and ignored requests for transparency.

Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin, who has been a leader in Congress on FERC oversight, will speak about the preliminary findings of an investigation by the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties showing that the natural gas pipeline approval process used by FERC unjustly tramples on the rights of private landowners.

These stories will demonstrate to Congress the need to reform this notoriously opaque agency.

Commissioners have rejected only one pipeline project in the past 30 years, allowing many others to continue no matter the environmental and human consequences. The collection will substantiate what is already clear from FERC’s approval record: this unsupervised agency, funded by those it regulates, is unfit to serve.

To read the dossier of abuses of power and law by FERC documented by the VOICES Coalition and the Delaware Riverkeeper, visit:

bit.ly/DossierofFERCAbuse

Dear Friends, Date: September 3, 2020

Today the Yellow Finch tree sit is celebrating 2 years of steady collaborative resistance to the Mountain Valley Pipeline in southwest Virginia. It is bold actions like these fearless hardy folks that “put a STOP sign in MVP’s pipeline”.

Looking for a way to help out? Check out Appalachians Against Pipelines Facebook page. Send money, supplies, or ask if you can show up to help.

Please also let the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) know you want the MVP shut down – check out the article and sign on letter below.

The Rights of Nature movement, is an ancient (and current) worldview of living in balance and is now being driven into law by communities around the world, as the way forward to shift our thinking away from parasitic insatiable consumerism and towards a sane legal system that supports all of us as equally important contributors to the whole. Scroll for more!

Thanks for your ongoing care and awakening to our higher potentials – together we win!

Heidi Berthoud, Secretary, Friends of Buckingham County, VA

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Tell FERC: Time’s up on the Mountain Valley Pipeline!

Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC, has requested a two-year extension on its certificate from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to build a massive, fracked-gas pipeline across West Virginia and Virginia. The certificate was issued in 2017 and paved the way for the project to snatch up private land, clear cut forest habitat and pollute dozens of rivers and streams.

Jump to the petition!

This unnecessary project is already two years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget, and has racked up $2 million in fines for destroying water quality. And it’s missing six federal permits and has been under a stop-work order from FERC for almost a year.

MVP, LLC, has lied to the media and to regulators, saying that the pipeline is over 90 percent complete. But the reality is closer to 51 percent (with only 15 percent complete in Virginia). And the remaining construction involves some of the most difficult terrain and water crossings on the entire route.

Please add your own words to give your message a boost.

Thanks to Appalachian Voices for this action letter!

We Can Build The Future — Together

Contact: Dani Heffernan, dani@350.org, 350.org, Common Dreams, 7/6/20

BROOKLYN, NY – Today, a federal judge ruled in favor of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to suspend the Dakota Access pipeline pending further environmental review. The pipeline, supported by Energy Transfer Partners, was met with massive global opposition, and this latest decision comes after the Trump administration fast-tracked the project in 2017.

Over the weekend, two utility companies announced the cancellation of the Atlantic Coast pipeline, citing mounting costs and delays. Local communities have been fighting the project since it was first proposed.

In response to these developments, 350.org Keep it in the Ground campaigner Kendall Mackey gave the following statement:

“These are massive victories for people and the planet. The Native-led effort to stop the Dakota Access pipeline ushered in a new era of resistance to fossil fuel corporations, and this movement is only getting stronger. The judge’s decision to suspend Dakota Access and the cancellation of the Atlantic Coast pipeline are signs that communities rising up against extraction can and do win. Big Oil’s business model has always been at odds with the fight for racial and economic justice, Indigenous sovereignty, and a safe climate. To build a just and equitable future, we must keep fossil fuels in the ground.”

#############################

The Earth’s atmosphere is already well past 400 parts-per-million in carbon dioxide, to say nothing about methane and the other GHGs

##################################

See also: ‘Renewable’ natural gas may sound green, but it’s not an antidote for climate change, Emily Grubert, Chicago Tribune (Associated Press), July 6, 2020

#####

Does “rotten to the core” apply ...?

From an Article by Corbin Hiar, E & E News, June 18, 2020

‘White environmental extremists’ is an off-base epitaph

Derrick Hollie is the president of Reaching America, a nonprofit group whose tax-exempt status was revoked by the Internal Revenue Service in 2017 because it repeatedly failed to file required annual reports.

Since then, Hollie has testified twice in the House Natural Resources Committee against efforts to transition the U.S. economy away from fossil fuels. At a February 2019 hearing, he denied receiving any funding from fossil fuel companies or corporations.

“With black communities ablaze, the same nearly uniformly white environmental extremists assure us of their solidarity while at the same time trying to kill high-paying oil and gas jobs that have been the cornerstones of progress in lifting up working-class minority communities,” Hollie was quoted as saying in the CRC email to journalists. “Any program such as their Green New Deal that makes energy more expensive or jeopardizes jobs is counter-productive, reckless, and wrong.”

Reaching America is based in Bennsville, Md., but its sparse website is registered to Domains By Proxy LLC, an Arizona firm that shields the identities of web address owners.

CRC also has a limited online presence.

The group is led by Leonard Leo, President Trump’s informal adviser on judicial nominees, and Greg Mueller, a conservative communications executive. The firm recently hired two Trump White House communications staffers and a Fox News veteran. CRC’s website lists no staff, clients or contact information.

Although Hollie and his group have a long history with CRC, he denied having a formal role with the firm. “Hell no! I wish I did,” he said with a laugh. “This guy named Jay Hopkins is who I deal with. “I knew CRC had an energy client,” he added. “I didn’t know it was Chevron.”

Hopkins, a senior account manager at CRC, has deep ties to the fossil fuel industry.

Prior to working at CRC, Hopkins did communications for Citizens for a Sound Economy, a think tank established in 1984 by the oil barons Charles and David Koch. The group eventually split and formed the tea party groups FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity.

In 2002, Hopkins joined CRC, which was previously known as Creative Response Concepts and CRC Public Relations.

During his time at CRC, he “identified and recruited third-party organizations to serve as surrogates for clients,” “wrote and placed client op-eds in top-line publications,” and “cultivated strong relationships with journalists nationwide, particularly focusing on reporters in energy,” according to his LinkedIn profile.

Blackwell, the former Ohio secretary of state, has written numerous op-eds over the years in support of the U.S. oil and gas industry as well as Chevron and other CRC clients.

In a 2012 Reuters blog post, Blackwell described Brazilian authorities’ attempt to penalize Chevron for a 3,600-barrel oil leak off the coast of Rio de Janeiro as “one of the most shameless shakedowns of an American company by another country in recent memory.”

Hollie, meanwhile, said that Reaching America works with organizations across the political spectrum. “I don’t appreciate being used as a racial pawn during this time and would appreciate if you leave me out of your vendetta against Chevron and CRC,” he said in a follow-up email.

‘Not being candid’ characterizes Chevron responses

Experts on corporate influence campaigns suggest that CRC is engaged in a shadowy campaign to shape federal policy on climate change. The firm may be “attempting to influence public policy surreptitiously using industry money,” said Marcus Owens, a partner at the law firm Loeb & Loeb LLP. “I’ve been doing this for nearly 50 years now, so I think I have a fairly well-developed sense of who’s not being candid.”

The involvement of the former Ohio secretary of state, in particular, was an indicator for Owens, the former head of the nonprofit division at the IRS. “You don’t hire Ken Blackwell if what you want to do is run a soup kitchen or truly educate people about anything,” he said. “You hire him if you want to run a political organization and you want to court industry or people who donate to right-of-center causes.”

The oil major’s ongoing involvement with CRC is troubling to some of the company’s shareholders. “If Chevron is hiring public relations companies that are putting out a message that is contrary to what the company is publicly espousing, that is a concern,” said Danielle Fugere, the president of As You Sow. “Just hiring these individuals or these groups for public communications purposes raises red flags.”

Her shareholder advocacy group backed a climate lobbying proposal put forth by the French investment group BNP Paribas Asset Management at Chevron’s annual shareholder meeting last month.

It called for the oil company’s board of directors to issue a report describing “if, and how, Chevron’s lobbying activities (direct and through trade associations) align” with the goal of the Paris Agreement, which calls for limiting average global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius.

Chevron’s board urged shareholders to vote against the resolution because the company “shares the concerns of governments and the public about climate change risks” and “adheres to the highest ethical standards when engaging in lobbying and political activities.”

A majority of its investors, however, backed the proposal.

Comey, the Chevron spokesman, indicated that the company doesn’t plan to detail its work with CRC in the climate lobbying report shareholders requested. “They help us with communications,” he wrote, referring to CRC. “They are not involved in lobbying.”

David Pellow, the African-American director of the University of California, Santa Barbara’s global environmental justice project, argued that Chevron’s involvement with CRC shows the oil company is more focused on countering support for the Green New Deal than helping communities of color.

With the U.S. in recession and tens of millions of Americans out of work, “the Green New Deal is now looking much more reasonable as a proposal,” he said. “And that’s got to have big polluters worried.”

Chevron has been criticized for its slow response to the widespread protests over police violence against people of color. The company released a statement on racial injustice on June 5 — two days after CRC pitched a story attacking a resolution that seeks to address that issue and combat climate change.

Comey said that “it’s important that we face and address the systemic racism and discrimination that denies African Americans equal access to opportunities for advancement.” Chevron, he added, is leading by example: “For more than 25 years, diversity and inclusion have been a part of our corporate culture.”

But Pellow, who is also the chairman of UC-Santa Barbara’s environmental studies department, said the company’s actions speak louder than its words. “If you’re perpetrating climate disruption, as Chevron is, then you’re also perpetrating racial injustice,” he said. People of color “the world over are being harmed disproportionately by climate change.”

#########################

See also: Chevron’s Slick Statement on Racial Injustice Makes No Sense, Drew Costley, OneZero, June 11, 2020

The company’s recent ‘Black Lives Matter’ message doesn’t jive with its actions

Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia

From an Article by Simone Jones & Nicole Noëlliste, Sidney Austin LLP, Bloomberg Law, March 5, 2020

The conventional wisdom in the environmental bar is that “environmental justice” remains an aspirational goal, rather than a concrete compliance point.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit recently sent the opposite message in Friends of Buckingham v. State Air Pollution Control Board (Jan. 7, 2020).

There, the court vacated the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board’s grant of a minor source permit to Atlantic Coast Pipeline LLC (ACP) for the construction and operation of a compressor station, intended to facilitate the transmission of natural gas through ACP’s pipeline, in a historic, predominantly African American community. The court declared that “environmental justice is not merely a box to be checked.”

In September 2015, ACP filed an application with Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) for a minor source New Source Review permit to construct and operate a compressor station consisting of four natural gas-fired turbines. The compressor station would emit nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and other pollutants. The compressor station was proposed to be constructed in Union Hill in Buckingham County, Virginia—an African American community largely occupied by descendants of freed slaves.

During the public comment period, a group of Buckingham County residents conducted a demographic study finding that Union Hill was largely African American, was comprised of descendants of former slaves, and alleged that community members suffered from health conditions that would make the residents more susceptible to emissions from the compressor station. Following public hearings, the board adopted the VA-DEQ’s recommendation to approve the permit.

Local Residents Challenge Compressor Permit

The Buckingham County residents challenged the permit before the Fourth Circuit, which vacated the approval of the permit on two primary grounds.

First, the court concluded that the board’s environmental justice review was insufficient in that it failed to determine whether the Union Hill community was a “minority” environmental justice community—an important designation when determining the likelihood of disproportionate health impacts to residents.

Under Va. Code Ann. § 10.1–1307(E), when approving minor source permits, the board is required to consider, among other things, “the character and degree of injury to, or interference with, safety, health, or the reasonable use of property which is caused or threatened to be caused,” and “the suitability of the activity to the areas in which it is located.”

The court cited as an additional error the board’s failure to assess the compressor station’s potential for disproportionate health impacts on the predominantly African American community, rejecting the board’s rationale that there could be no disproportionate health effects from air pollution below the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). Notably, the court reasoned that even if all pollutants within the county remained below the NAAQS, the board must still assess the effect on the communities living closest to the compressor station.

The court also found that the board erred in failing to consider electric motors as alternatives to gas-fired turbines—technology that petitioners claimed would eliminate nearly all on-site air pollution from the compressor station.

Virginia Law was not clear or rational

Under Virginia law, minor source construction permits require best available control technology (BACT) review, a requirement that applies only under federal law to major emitting sources. The court rejected the “only rationale the Board could have ostensibly relied upon … for refusing to consider electric motors in its BACT analysis”: that replacing gas-fired turbines with electronic motors would constitute an impermissible “redefinition of the source.”

The court found that it was unable to locate in the administrative record a sufficient explanation of what the phrase means under Virginia law, specifically concluding, “We— and most importantly, the citizens of Virginia— do not know what the Virginia redefining the source doctrine is, how it works, and how this project meets its requirements.”

The court’s stated uncertainty should serve as direction to companies that “redefining a source” is yet another important issue to be considered as part of the project planning and approval process.

Concrete Compliance Requirement

The Fourth Circuit’s decision indicates that thorough consideration of a planned project’s potential impact on environmental justice communities is a concrete compliance requirement. Concerns around environmental justice have previously played a critical role in delaying energy projects.

For example, in In re: Shell Gulf of Mexico Inc. & Shell Offshore Inc. (EPA Dec. 30, 2010), the Environmental Appeals Board, in remanding Shell’s Clean Air Act permits for drilling in the Arctic, held that the EPA’s analysis of the permitted drilling’s effect on environmental justice communities was inadequate.

Given what appears to be an emerging trend requiring compliance, the regulated community should carefully consider environmental justice laws and their import when planning and seeking approval of major, capital-intensive projects.

#########################

Environmental Justice Review requires an in-depth study

.... many spoke out but few were listening ...

From an Article by Vivian Thomson, Virginia Mercury, January 9, 2020

On January 7, 2019, I posed the following question about the Atlantic Coast Pipeline compressor station proposed for Union Hill: “Is an African-American community in rural Virginia the right place to put a massive compressor station for a natural gas pipeline? This is the question the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board will consider at its meeting Tuesday.”

On Tuesday, exactly a year later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit vacated the air board’s decision to approve a permit for the compressor station, concluding that the board and the State Department of Environmental Quality failed to consider “whether this facility is suitable for this site.” The court also found “arbitrary and capricious and unsupported by substantial evidence” DEQ’s refusal to consider as Best Available Control Technology an electric turbine, which would not emit on-site air pollution.

I argued last January that Gov. Northam should pressure Dominion Energy, the lead partner in the Atlantic Coast Pipeline consortium, to find another site for the station, or that the governor should work with the General Assembly to that end. Several weeks earlier, in November 2018, the governor had abruptly ended the tenure of two air board members who were opposed to the compressor station. In sending this unmistakable message to the board, Governor Northam sided with Dominion Energy, even before all the facts were in.

Here are some of the facts that, as far as I know, the air board never saw. Researchers have not identified a safe threshold for exposure to fine particulate matter, which increases the risk of death at levels below the EPA’s standards. Each additional microgram per cubic meter of airborne fine particulate matter, measured as an annual average, causes an estimated 0.6 to 1 percent increase in mortality. Dominion Energy’s modeling showed that the compressor station’s pollution could add 1.5 micrograms per cubic meter of fine particulate matter to local annual average levels of fine particulate matter. Buckingham County already shows a lower life expectancy than the statewide average.

Scientists have connected cardiovascular and respiratory disease with exposure to fine particulate matter concentrations similar to those estimated in Dominion’s air-quality modeling. African Americans are among the most vulnerable to the effects of fine particulate matter exposures.

The air board is made up of citizens appointed by the governor who work without pay to promote transparency via public debates and votes and to broaden the base of regulatory decision making. Those board members rely on DEQ’s staff and leaders to provide them with both a wide range of regulatory alternatives and also with insightful, complete analyses.

Clearly, DEQ failed the board on both counts. I wish I could say I was surprised. In 2008, when I was on the air board, two fellow board members suggested that the 1987 board statement on site suitability should be revised, to clarify the board’s powers with respect to site suitability. The board members’ ideas were rebuffed by senior officials in the administration of then-Gov. Tim Kaine, including DEQ managers.

As I set forth in my 2017 book, Climate of Capitulation: An Insider’s Account of State Power in a Coal Nation, Virginia suffers from a persistent tendency by elected politicians and DEQ’s management to yield to the regulated community’s preferences, whether those preferences are explicitly stated or merely anticipated. On two high profile power plant permits that the board considered during my tenure, DEQ staff and managers repeatedly failed to press companies to achieve the lowest emissions possible, within the constraints of the law and available technologies.

In the wake of the outrage about a racist photo discovered on his medical school year book page, Gov. Northam has professed his support for the state’s minorities. So, it’s time for our governor to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. The governor must ensure, either through pressure or legislation, that this compressor station is moved to a remote location well away from people and non-human organisms that might be adversely affected.

The air board must assert its right to have the full picture on best technologies. Since the 4th Circuit has now decided that the board’s legal obligation includes formally assessing the environmental justice implications of its decisions, the board must revise and take public comment on its 33-year-old site suitability policy, before making any other permit decisions.

And finally: It is long past time for new management at DEQ.

The dedicated staff at DEQ deserve to be led by someone who will take them to high ground and help them hold it.

Friends of Nelson County & others are “standing” with Union Hill

Legal Brief: FERC’s Flaws Endanger Communities of Color in Atlantic Coast Pipeline Path

PRESS RELEASE. Contact: Jake Thompson, jthompson@nrdc.org, (202) 289-2387, Fabiola Nunez, fnunez@nrdc.org, (646) 889-1405; Elizabeth Heyd, eheyd@nrdc.org, (202) 289-2424

WASHINGTON (April 15, 2019) – The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission broke the law in two key ways that discounted and endangered African American and American Indian communities in Virginia and North Carolina in approving the proposed Atlantic Coast gas pipeline. That’s what environmental, civil rights, faith-based, and other groups contend in a brief filed in federal court.

“The Atlantic Coast gas project is controversial for many reasons—it’s costly, unneeded, and could endanger drinking water and pollute other natural resources while fueling climate change,” said Montina Cole, senior attorney in the Sustainable FERC Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Tragically, it’s also a prime example of FERC effectively facilitating environmental injustice. We’re calling on the court to right this wrong and help protect communities of color in Virginia and North Carolina from environmental hazard and harm.”

NRDC and nine other groups filed an amicus brief on April 12 challenging FERC’s approval of the Atlantic Coast pipeline on environmental justice grounds before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The groups want the court to declare FERC’s approval of the pipeline null and void or order FERC to conduct a new environmental justice review.

The other signers are: Center for Earth Ethics; Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice; North Carolina Poor People’s Campaign; Repairers of the Breach; Satchidananda Ashram – Yogaville; Union Grove Missionary Baptist Church; Virginia Interfaith Power & Light; Virginia State Conference NAACP; and WE ACT for Environmental Justice.

The brief details how FERC failed to serve the public interest in evaluating, and approving, construction of the proposed 600-mile, $7.5 billion Atlantic Coast project. Dominion Energy is seeking to build the pipeline to transport gas through West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina.

“If the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission conducted a thorough public interest analysis, as it should, a balanced and accurate environmental justice review would further demonstrate what is already known: that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline is not needed to meet our energy needs, is environmentally unjust, would cause permanent environmental damage, and should be rejected,” said William Barber III, Co-Chair, Ecological Devastation Committee, North Carolina Poor People’s Campaign.

FERC’s most egregious error was relying on a deeply flawed methodology to identify environmental justice communities affected by the Atlantic Coast project and failing to address the adverse impacts of the project.

First, FERC relied on three large census tracts to analyze the potential impact of a planned gas compressor station for the pipeline in Virginia’s Buckingham County. Because the census tracts covered 500 square miles and included largely white rural areas, FERC found no environmental justice communities were near the compressor site.

That’s even though the compressor site would be in Union Hill—a largely African American community founded by freed slaves. Through its flawed analysis, which included another error that ruled out identifying an environmental justice community, FERC essentially erased or buried Union Hill.

The end result: FERC cooked its analysis and found no harm would come from the air pollution generated by the industrial compressor facility on a community of people who would be disproportionately impacted by air pollution. A map of this issue with further explanation is here.

Second, FERC lumped all “minorities” together, which led it to overlook the fact that 25 percent of North Carolina’s American Indians, about 50,000 people, live along the Atlantic Coast route. The end outcome: FERC offered no analysis of the impacts of the pipeline on American Indians.

Because FERC failed to identify these communities of color in Virginia and North Carolina, it didn’t analyze the health and environmental risks they face from the pipeline and its compressor stations, the groups charge. It’s well documented that pollution emitted from compressor stations exacerbates health issues like asthma and cancer risks that disproportionally affect communities of color.

Incredibly, even when FERC did identify a minority community—like the one near another planned compressor site in North Carolina—it dismissed the disproportionate health risks, saying that pollution levels would be within legal limits. But that doesn’t constitute an analysis of the impact on the community—it’s a dodge. Further, the Environmental Protection Agency has found the pollutants present health risks at any level, the groups note in their brief.

Others who signed onto the brief weighed in on the issue:

>>> Rev. Paul Wilson, Union Grove Missionary Baptist Church said: “Dominion is following a playbook utility companies often use: ram a risky project through a marginalized community, like Union Hill, because they can’t stop it. They treated us as though we didn’t even exist for a while. But we refused to be treated that way. Our community will keep on refusing to be treated as though we don’t matter, because we are strong, we are united, and we are convinced that this this pipeline, and its compressor station, pose a risk to us that we should not have to bear.”

>>> Rev. Kevin Chandler, President, Virginia State Conference NAACP, said: “The Virginia State Conference NAACP continues to stand strongly in opposition to any project that presents disproportionate impact to the health and safety of African-American, communities of color, and low-income communities. African-Americans are exposed to 38 percent more polluted air than Caucasian Americans and are 75 percent more likely to live in fence-line communities than the average American. Furthermore, the pollution emitted by compressor stations, like the one proposed for Union Hill, is linked to increased risk of cancer and respiratory disorders, not to mention the pollution the compressor station will cause to our lands and water bodies. This project should never have been approved. Now is a golden opportunity to right a wrong, and protect our air, water, lands, and people.”

>>> Karenna Gore, Director, Center for Earth Ethics, said: “Every American has an inalienable right to breathe clean air, drink safe water, be protected from poisons and live free from environmental injustice. We are honored to stand with the too-often marginalized people on the frontlines of ecological devastation, like those in Union Hill and Indigenous families along the proposed route of the Atlantic Coast pipeline, who are fighting for their rights, and our future.”

>>> Kendal Crawford, Director, Virginia Interfaith Power & Light, said: “This is what environmental injustice looks like, and Virginia is not alone. It’s sobering, clear and disturbing to see that fossil fuel infrastructure—from power plants to pipelines—is too often placed in communities of color across our country, and FERC is guilty of promoting this environmental injustice. It shouldn’t be allowed to continue operating this way, putting people at grave risk, if we are striving towards a just society.”

>>> Cecil Corbin-Mark, Director of Policy Initiatives, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, said: “Low-income and people of color are more likely to live closer to sources of pollution, leading to unfair health outcomes. We hope that the court will undo FERC’s too-hasty approval of the Atlantic Coast pipeline and the compressor facility that would emit unhealthy air pollution in Union Hill. Everyone has the right to breathe clean air and we need action in our most vulnerable communities to ensure that right extends to all Americans.”

The groups argue that in its environmental justice review, FERC violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). They hope the court agrees and decides to take action against FERC.

The legal brief is here.

A blog on the issue by NRDC’s Montina Cole is here.

A map showing one way FERC evaluated whether an environmental justice community exists near the proposed pipeline’s compressor facility in Virginia is here.