Frack Check WV » stream impacts

Climate Change Role in Heat Waves Now an Unprecedented Crisis

Duane Nichols — Fri, 09 Jul 2021 21:07:39 +0000

Climate change promotes extreme weather worldwide

Study: Northwest heat wave impossible without climate change

From an Article by Seth Borenstein, Associated Press, July 5, 2021

The deadly heat wave that roasted the Pacific Northwest and western Canada was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change that added a few extra degrees to the record-smashing temperatures, a new quick scientific analysis found.

An international team of 27 scientists calculated that climate change increased chances of the extreme heat occurring by at least 150 times, but likely much more.

The study, not yet peer reviewed, said that before the industrial era, the region’s late June triple-digit heat was the type that would not have happened in human civilization. And even in today’s warming world, it said, the heat was a once-in-a-millennium event.

But that once-in-a-millennium event would likely occur every five to 10 years once the world warms another 1.4 degrees (0.8 degrees Celsius), said Wednesday’s study from World Weather Attribution. That much warming could be 40 or 50 years away if carbon pollution continues at its current pace, one study author said.

This type of extreme heat “would go from essentially virtually impossible to relatively commonplace,” said study co-author Gabriel Vecchi, a Princeton University climate scientist. “That is a huge change.”

The study also found that in the Pacific Northwest and Canada climate change was responsible for about 3.6 degrees (2 degrees Celsius) of the heat shock. Those few degrees make a big difference in human health, said study co-author Kristie Ebi, a professor at the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the University of Washington.

“This study is telling us climate change is killing people,” said Ebi, who endured the blistering heat in Seattle. She said it will be many months before a death toll can be calculated from June’s blast of heat but it’s likely to be hundreds or thousands. “Heat is the No. 1 weather-related killer of Americans.”

In Oregon alone, the state medical examiner on Wednesday reported 116 deaths related to the heat wave.

The team of scientists used a well-established and credible method to search for climate change’s role in extreme weather, according to the National Academy of Sciences. They logged observations of what happened and fed them into 21 computer models and ran numerous simulations. They then simulated a world without greenhouse gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. The difference between the two scenarios is the climate change portion.

“Without climate change this event would not have happened,” said study senior author Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford.

What made the Northwest heat wave so remarkable is how much hotter it was than old records and what climate models had predicted. Scientists say this hints that some kind of larger climate shift could be in play — and in places that they didn’t expect.

“Everybody is really worried about the implications of this event,” said study co-author Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, a Dutch climate scientist. “This is something that nobody saw coming, that nobody thought possible. And we feel that we do not understand heat waves as well as we thought we did. The big question for many people is: Could this also happen in a lot of places?”

The World Weather Attribution team does these quick analyses, which later get published in peer-reviewed journals. In the past, they have found similar large climate change effects in many heat waves, including ones in Europe and Siberia. But sometimes the team finds climate change wasn’t a factor, as they did in a Brazilian drought and a heat wave in India.

Six outside scientists said the quick study made sense and probably underestimated the extent of climate change’s role in the heat wave. That’s because climate models used in the simulations usually underestimate how climate change alters the jet stream that parks “heat domes” over regions and causes some heat waves, said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann.

The models also underestimate how dry soil worsens heat because there is less water to evaporate, which feeds a vicious cycle of drought, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and the Nature Conservancy.

The study hit home for University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver, who wasn’t part of the research team. “Victoria, which is known for its mild climate, felt more like Death Valley last week,” Weaver said. “I’ve been in a lot of hot places in the world, and this was the worst I’ve ever been in.

“But you ain’t seen nothing yet,” he added. “It’s going to get a lot worse.”

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Read more stories on climate issues by The Associated Press at https://www.apnews.com/Climate

ACP and MVP Pipeline Projects Under Regulatory Review

Duane Nichols — Wed, 18 Oct 2017 11:04:30 +0000

$peculation on Natural Gas Pipeline Projects Is Wide$pread, Part 2

S. Tom Bond — Sun, 06 Aug 2017 16:43:11 +0000

Pipeline Payday: How Builders Win Big, Whether More Gas Is Needed or Not, Part 2

From an Article by Phil McKenna, Inside Climate News, August 3, 2017

How the Cozy Relationship Pays Off

Historically, utilities had no corporate affiliation with the pipeline companies that provided their natural gas. That has changed in recent years as utilities seek to take advantage of higher returns from interstate pipeline projects and the limited scrutiny from federal officials who oversee those permit applications.

As regulated monopolies, utilities are allowed to be the sole provider of gas or electricity in a given region in exchange for the public service they provide. The utilities are allowed to make a profit, but they agree to certain limits on what they can charge customers who have nowhere else to go for their energy needs.

One way states limit local utilities’ profits is through the rate of return they are allowed to receive on new infrastructure projects—typically an 8 percent return on equity.

Interstate natural gas transmission pipelines, however, are regulated by the federal government, which typically allows around a 14 percent return on equity.

To capture that higher rate of return, the parent company of a local utility may acquire a gas pipeline company, or form a joint venture with a pipeline company, and then pair their utility and pipeline company together to build a new pipeline. Shareholders of the parent company make a tidy profit while ratepayers are stuck paying a premium for expensive new infrastructure.

“Instead of an investment earning 8 percent, they are able to get a very large return through the same invested capital,” said Greg Lander, president of Skipping Stone, an energy markets consulting firm.

PennEast Pipeline: A Question of Need

“We are in perfectly fine shape right now with the capacity that we have,” said Stefanie Brand, director for the Division of Rate Counsel in New Jersey, which officially represents the interests of consumers of regulated utilities.

Existing pipelines supplying local gas distribution utilities in eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey currently have 50 percent more capacity than needed to meet their periods of greatest demand—even during the “polar vortex” extreme winter weather of 2014, according to a study conducted by Lander for The New Jersey Conservation Foundation.

If approved, pipeline builder Spectra and the utility holding companies that would own the pipeline would receive a 14 percent return on equity for the project.

New Jersey’s Rate Counsel “is concerned that this opportunity may be a key motivating factor behind the project,” counsel attorneys wrote in comments filed to FERC last September. “In this financial environment, the opportunity to receive a Commission-regulated return of 14 percent is tantamount to winning the lottery.”

The American Gas Association, a trade group representing local natural gas utility companies, said gas companies only invest in pipeline projects if they need the added pipeline capacity.

“They are not going to sign on to capacity when they can’t demonstrate that they actually need it,” said Susan Bergles, assistant general counsel for the American Gas Association. “They are getting involved in a project because they need it.”

The 14 percent return on equity that FERC allows is a relic from another time. FERC’s current policies on the certification and pricing of new interstate gas pipelines were set in September 1999. At the time, the prime interest rate—the rate banks charge their most creditworthy customers—was 8.25 percent, compared to 4.25 percent today.

State public utility commissions from at least five states—North Carolina, New York, Missouri, Connecticut and Kentucky—have challenged the high rates of return allowed by FERC since its current pricing policy was enacted in 1999, yet the policy remains.

FERC spokeswoman Tamara Young-Allen declined to comment for this article because the issues of rate of return and determination of need have been raised in cases pending before the commission.

The 1999 pricing policy played a role in the rise of the affiliate pipelines of today. Another key element came in 2005, when the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 was repealed. The act kept the parent, or “holding,” companies of regulated utilities from engaging in non-regulated business. The longstanding law was replaced by less-stringent restrictions on regulated utilities, paving the way for the growing number of affiliate pipeline projects seen today.

ACP — Atlantic Coast Pipeline: Antitrust Concerns

In Virginia and North Carolina, a group of three utility holding companies formed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, LLC, a joint venture, to construct and operate the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

The $5 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline would run 600 miles from West Virginia to North Carolina and has been hotly contested by environmental advocates and landowners who oppose the project.

According to Michael Hirrel, a former antitrust attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, the pipeline is an illegal monopoly. Hirrel, who owns a second home at a resort in the Blue Ridge Mountains where the pipeline would cross, filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission in 2016 alleging the pipeline violates U.S. antitrust laws.

Dominion Energy and Duke Energy, the lead investors in the project, declined to comment.

The utility companies have legal, regulated monopolies selling retail gas and electricity to their ratepayers, but they run into trouble when they branch out into other related businesses, Hirrel said. “An existing monopoly cannot extend its monopoly upstream or downstream into what are now competitive markets,” Hirrel, said. “That goes back to the beginning of antitrust law.”

NEXUS Pipeline: Blocking More Cost-Effective Sources?

The Sierra Club filed a similar antitrust complaint with FERC, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission in November against the DTE Electric Company in Michigan. DTE and its affiliate, NEXUS Gas Transmission, LLC, seek to build the $2 billion NEXUS pipeline from Ohio to Michigan.

The complaint alleges the project would raise electricity rates above competitive levels and exclude more cost-effective energy sources, including renewables.

It’s unclear what will happen in either antitrust case, but opponents of affiliate pipelines have had recent success elsewhere.

In 2016, environmental advocacy group Conservation Law Foundation won a lawsuit against the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources that effectively halted Access Northeast, an affiliate pipeline project that the advocacy group said was not needed.

After New Jersey’s Rate Counsel first voiced opposition to the PennEast pipeline last year, Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG), one of the holding companies involved in the project, pulled out in June. The company said opposition to the project played no role in its decision.

“PSEG sold its share to concentrate on core business, not in reaction to actions taken by others,” PSEG spokesman Paul Rosengren said.

The Rate Counsel is now urging FERC to conduct an independent analysis of whether there is a need for PennEast rather than relying on contracts between closely related companies as evidence of demand.

A model for such independent analysis is close at hand, NRDC’s Mall said.

“Look at how FERC has set up approvals for electricity transmission—it’s very different,” she said. “When they look at electricity transmission, they have to do a regional analysis of what is needed, and they have regional organizations that look at this issue.”

Is the Pipeline Boom a Bubble in the Making?

If questionable projects continue to be approved, the current pipeline boom could soon bust in the same way subprime mortgages imploded the housing market in the late 2000s, said Lander, the energy markets consultant.

“When transactions like that were motivated simply by money rather than providing a necessary service, it was indication of the coming bust,” Lander said of the housing crash. “It is possible that the pipelines that are driven by affiliate subscriptions are an indication that the truly economic pipelines that really meet market need and market demand are getting fewer and fewer and people are being motivated more and more by just financial engineering.”

Update on MVP from Greenbrier River Watershed Association

Duane Nichols — Wed, 28 Dec 2016 21:09:57 +0000

Simulated View of MVP from Appalachian Trail

MOUNTAIN VALLEY PIPELINE – The 401 Permit Application for Construction has been filed with WV-DEP. Comments may be made any time. The 401 Certification is required to permit the entry to or crossing of streams where stream flows may be interrupted and/or sediment, subsidence or dissolved chemicals may affect the stream.

http://www.dep.wv.gov/news/Pages/Public-Comment-Period-on-Mountain-Valley-Pipeline-401-Water-Quality-Certification-Extended.aspx

The 401 certification for the Mountain Valley Pipeline has not yet been issued or denied. Public comments are still being accepted and can be emailed to: DEP.comments@wv.gov.

They can also be mailed to the WV-DEP headquarters, the address is below. There may be a public hearing or hearings, but nothing has been scheduled yet.

Source: Kelley J. Gillenwater, Chief Communications Officer, West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, 601 57^th St. SE, Charleston, WV 25304

Telephone: 304-926-0499, ext. 1331

> > > > > > > > > >

Two excellent sources of information on negative impacts of Mountain Valley Pipeline.

1. APPALACHIAN TRAIL CONSERVANCY had a whole new web page, with easy to use letters and links. https://www.appalachiantrail.org/home/conservation/advocacy/conservation-current-issues-full-story/advocacy—current-issues/2016/11/18/mountain-valley-pipeline-project-threatens-ecosystems-and-landscape-of-virginia-and-west-virginia

2. New blog on APPALACHIAN TRIALS (note spelling) a widely read online source among AT hikers has lots of details about negative impacts of MVP

http://appalachiantrials.com/a-modern-day-threat-to-the-at-the-proposed-mountain-valley-pipeline/

GREENBRIER RIVER WATERSHED ASSOCIATION

Thanks for your support of the Greenbrier River Watershed Association over the past year, and for some of you, for many years. You are receiving our email newsletters, which come out about twice a month. They contain information which we hope you have found useful. Also, if you have not recently been to the website, www.greenbrier.org, please visit us there. It has undergone changes that you will like. We are also on Facebook at Greenbrier Watershed.

Send the following information with your check: Name, Address & Email. We do not share our mailing list with any outside source. All contributions are tax deductible. Please indicate if you need a return letter documenting your contribution for tax purposes.

Sincerely, John Walkup, President, Greenbrier River Watershed Association, P.O. Box 1419, Lewisburg, WV 24901 (304-647-4792)

The Greenbrier River Watershed Association would like to thank each and every one of you for your support in the past year. We wish you a very Happy New Year!!!!

Notice Regarding Impacts on Water Resources, Wetlands and Wildlife

Duane Nichols — Thu, 11 Aug 2016 15:25:42 +0000

West Virginia Rivers Coalition

Deadline for Public Comments on Two Projects Due by August 12^th

[Your Comments Needed by 5 pm, Tomorrow, 8/12/16]

The WVDEP is currently accepting comments on two 401 Water Quality Certification Applications. What is a 401 permit? Read our 401 fact sheet to learn more. The permit application for these large projects should be very detailed, but both lack information that WVDEP needs to certify the projects will not impact our water.

Rover Pipeline 401 Application
The proposed Rover pipeline would install approximately 60 miles of new 24 and 36-inch pipelines through Hancock, Marshall, Wetzel, Doddridge and Tyler counties to transport natural gas to markets in Ohio and Michigan. The project would impact approximately 175 streams and involve 3 crossings under the Ohio River. To submit comments to the WVDEP on Rover’s inadequate 401 application click here.

Antero 401 Application
The proposed Antero landfill and wastewater treatment facility encompasses approximately 486 acres in Doddridge and Ritchie Counties. The facility would treat fracking wastewater for re-use and dispose of the salt byproducts in the attached landfill. It is still unclear how they plan to dispose of the sludge byproduct. The project would impact 89 streams and 11 wetlands and is located 4 miles upstream of Harrisville’s drinking water intake. To submit comments to WVDEP on Antero’s insufficient 401 application click here.

Comments on each 401 application must be submitted separately. Please send your comments on these projects by 5pm, tomorrow, August 12.

>>> For more information contact West Virginia Rivers Coalition,

www.wvrivers.org – (304) 637-7201

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Notice Issued by WV Department of Environmental Protection

[Antero Project Comment Period Extended to August 23^rd]

Thursday, August 11, 2016 @ 8:35 AM

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The public comment period for a state water quality certification requested by Antero Landfill Project and Antero Treatment LLC has been extended to August 23rd.

The comment period was initially slated to end on August 12th but was extended by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s Division of Water and Waste Management due to significant public interest.

Pursuant to Section 401 of the Federal Clean Water Act, the state may either certify, certify with conditions, deny or waive certification that the proposed activity will comply with Sections 301, 302, 303, 306 and 307 of the Federal Clean Water Act and other appropriate requirements of state law.

When issuing certification, the WVDEP may consider the proposed activity’s impact on water resources, fish and wildlife, recreation, critical habitats, wetlands and other natural resources under its jurisdiction. Procedural and interpretive regulations governing the scope of the department’s certification, public comment, hearings and appeals are in Title 47, Series 5A.

The 401 permit application is connected to a project that involves construction of a non-commercial industrial solid waste disposal landfill located in Ritchie and Doddridge Counties. The landfill would accommodate salt generated from the adjacent Antero Clearwater Water Treatment and Reuse Facility. Construction of the site would include an access road between the landfill and the treatment facility.

The Water Quality Certification application is available for inspection between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, at the following location:

WV Department of Environmental Protection
Division of Water and Waste Management
401 Certification Program
601 57th Street SE
Charleston, WV 25304

Comments and information relating to Section 401 Water Quality Certification for this activity will be considered if postmarked prior to August 23rd. All such comments and information should be mailed to the address above or emailed to dep.comments@wv.gov.

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To view past notices of open public comment periods, login at:

http://apps.dep.wv.gov//MLists2/