Regional Initiatives Across the United States

From an Article by Sarah Vogelsong, Virginia Mercury, March 17, 2021

The $43 million was “in the state’s hot little hands,” Mike Dowd told the group. So what next?

That was the question facing not only Mike Dowd, director of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality’s Air Division, but also a collection of developers, state officials and environmental and low-income advocacy groups who had gathered over Zoom.

All were focused on the best uses of that $43 million in carbon money, the first round of funds Virginia had received through its participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, an 11-state agreement that puts a price on the carbon emissions that are driving climate change, requires power plants to pay that price and then channels the proceeds back to the states.

Most of that funding will eventually be paid for by customers of the state’s electric utilities, which are allowed under state law to pass on the costs of carbon allowances to customers, with no extra returns for investors. State officials had conservatively projected annual proceeds from RGGI’s carbon auctions to be in the range of $106 to $109 million. But with allowances trading at $7.60 per short ton of emissions at this March’s quarterly auction, actual revenues now look to be much higher, amounting to perhaps as much as $174 million annually if prices hold.

What to do with that major new stream of income — especially in a pandemic year when purses are tight — has been the preoccupation of dozens of Virginia officials this winter.

The law passed by the General Assembly in 2020 authorizing participation in RGGI spells out certain high-level priorities for the funds: 50 percent for low-income energy efficiency programs, 45 percent for a new Community Flood Preparedness Fund to assist communities affected by recurrent flooding and sea level rise, 3 percent for DEQ to oversee Virginia’s participation in RGGI and carry out statewide climate change planning and the remainder for other administrative work.

But between those goals and projects on the ground lies a lot of space. Should the state be creating new programs or beefing up existing ones? Should certain housing types or certain geographic areas get priority — particularly given new equity commitments designed to ensure that benefits are felt across the board?

“There’s not a whole lot of direction there, so I think it’s really important … to think about the spirit of the legislation and try to address some of the underlying causes,” said Dawone Robinson, director of an energy affordability program run by the Natural Resources Defense Council and a member of one of the advisory boards Virginia convened to decide how to spend its carbon dollars.

Compounding the challenge has been time constraints: Virginia’s fiscal year ends on June 30. With the first auction funds arriving this March, agencies have only a few short months to spend them. While RGGI funds are nonreverting, meaning agencies won’t lose them at the end of the fiscal year, most are eager to get the funds out of the door immediately.

“If we’d had our druthers, we would have been working on this last year,” said Carmen Bingham of the Virginia Poverty Law Center, who is also serving on the same advisory board as Robinson. Between slowdowns due to COVID-19 and the RGGI law not going into effect until July 1, however, the agencies that will receive the bulk of the carbon funds — the Department of Housing and Community Development, which will oversee the low-income energy efficiency funds, and the Department of Conservation and Recreation, which will oversee the Flood Preparedness Fund — have been forced to move quickly to narrow down their priorities.

“We’re in this very weird place of having to work frantically in order to come up with how do we spend this first round of money,” said Bingham. But, she added, “that’s the hand we’re dealt and the cards we’ve got to play.”

Low-income energy efficiency in Virginia

From the beginning, Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration zeroed in on the possibilities the funds earmarked under the RGGI law for low-income energy efficiency offered for affordable housing.

Low-income tenants ideally would be able to rent “more highly efficient properties” as a result of RGGI funding, then-Deputy Secretary of Commerce and Trade Angela Navarro said during a webinar last July. An administration memo similarly identified “deeper levels of energy efficiency” in affordable housing and upgrades to public housing as priorities.

Advocates, however, pointed in a different direction: weatherization, a set of improvements to a building that cut down on energy waste and consequently tend to lower electric bills.

The federal government has funded weatherization programs for low-income households since the 1970s, but federal program guidelines strictly define what falls under the weatherization umbrella. Improvements like roof or wall repairs that are deemed health and safety issues don’t qualify, even if they are fixes that have to occur before weatherization can be done. When weatherization providers encounter these issues, they have to walk away, creating what’s called a “deferral.”

In Virginia, those number in the hundreds: Janaka Casper, CEO of Community Housing Partners, the state’s largest weatherization provider, said that as of 2019 his organization had recorded 525 deferrals.

In practice, that has meant that “the homes that are most in need of weatherization services can’t be worked on,” said Chelsea Harnish, executive director of the Virginia Energy Efficiency Council. “This is housing stock that is in desperate need. This could be a hole in the roof. It could be a hole in the floor. To me that directly goes to energy efficiency.”

To many advocates, who have been asked by the Department of Housing and Community Development how its portion of the RGGI money — which this fiscal year will amount to $21.7 million — should be spent, the deferrals were a top priority. Not only did they represent an identified need, but they offered the opportunity to address some of the commonwealth’s most vulnerable populations, including historically economically disadvantaged and minority communities.

“From a sheer climate perspective, it has often been the preferred route to tackle the low-hanging fruit,” said Robinson. “That’s not low-income housing. That’s not rental housing.”

But policymakers must “look at the totality of benefits that can be achieved,” he insisted. “If you value equity, what is the cost of achieving racial equity? If you value increasing indoor air quality, what is the value of human health?” he asked. “These are invaluable measures that aren’t addressed and aren’t calculated in a traditional cost-benefit (analysis).”

As the Department of Housing and Community Development’s RGGI advisory group met throughout the winter, weatherization slowly slid onto the priority list. This Monday, the group signed off on a recommendation for how this year’s carbon funds should be spent: 60 percent on weatherization and 40 percent on efforts to increase energy efficiency for affordable housing through the state’s Affordable and Special Needs Housing Program.

Advocates like Bingham said the split bridged the state’s immediate needs and longer-term ones. Weatherization “has that immediate impact that we can actually see, whereas housing projects are going to take awhile. They’re not going to be as quick to get a benefit right away,” she said.

…. Part 2 scheduled to appear next ……
.

MVP has created a trail of land disturbances in WV & VA

From an Article by Laurence Hammack, Roanoke Times, March 10, 2020

At a time when building the Mountain Valley Pipeline was focused almost entirely on controlling erosion, muddy runoff continued to flow from dormant construction sites.

In a letter last month to a conservation group that first raised the issue, Virginia Department of Environmental Quality Director David Paylor said the infractions would be forwarded to the state attorney general’s office, which has the authority to seek tough financial penalties.

VA-DEQ is “committed to aggressively and effectively enforcing and maintaining compliance of the Mountain Valley Pipeline construction,” Paylor wrote in a Feb. 13 letter to David Sligh, conservation director of Wild Virginia. Sligh made the letters public this week.

Sligh had asked the week before about DEQ inspections that showed violations of erosion and sediment control regulations from Sept. 19 through Dec. 20, 2019 — when construction of the controversial natural gas pipeline was stalled by legal action, leaving workers to concentrate largely on efforts to curb erosion.

The violations were especially troubling, Sligh wrote, because they began so shortly after Sept. 18 — the last day covered by a consent decree in which Mountain Valley agreed to pay Virginia $2.15 million to settle a lawsuit that alleged similar problems in the past. Approved in December, the consent decree carried a provision for enhanced fines should the same issues recur.

Paylor wrote a month ago in his letter to Sligh that “DEQ acknowledges noncompliance noted in inspection reports during the last quarter of 2019. These will be communicated to the Office of the Attorney General for inclusion in a future demand for penalties.”

But no demand had apparently been made by Tuesday. DEQ spokeswoman Ann Regn said the agency is “compiling noncompliance information monthly” and will notify Mountain Valley, in conjunction with the attorney general, of any violations or penalties.

A spokeswoman for Mountain Valley said the company had not been told of any recent violations. “MVP continues to work cooperatively with the DEQ,” Natalie Cox wrote in an email.

In a follow-up letter to Paylor on Monday, Sligh urged the state to act promptly. — “Violations by MVP, which have been frequent and damaging to waterbodies and landowners, must not be handled as routine occurrences,” he wrote. “If construction resumes, the history of this project tells us that the frequency and magnitude of violations is likely to increase, unless DEQ shows that it will act quickly and decisively.”

An attorney for Mountain Valley accused Sligh of making “inaccurate and misleading statements” about the company’s compliance with erosion and sediment control regulations.

It’s not unusual for silt fences, sediment traps and other erosion control devices to be breached by heavy rains, but those “deficiencies” can be quickly repaired and do not amount to formal violations, Todd Normane, deputy general counsel for Equitrans Midstream Corp., wrote in a Feb. 25 letter to Sligh that was posted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s online docket.

“There is a persistent misconception that Virginia law prohibits the discharge of sediment-laden storm water from a construction site,” Normane wrote. “That is legally incorrect and factually impossible.

“The inspection reports cited in your letter do not represent violations and the ‘aggressive enforcement action’ requested by Wild Virginia is not warranted,” the letter stated. Sligh, however, said it appears that his reading of the reports was borne out by Paylor’s letter.

Normane also accused Wild Virginia and other environmental groups of making matters worse by filing multiple legal challenges, which have delayed pipeline construction and forced the use of temporary erosion control measures that are more vulnerable to storms.

“If Wild Virginia’s concern is truly erosion and sedimentation, then the best environmental outcome is to support the completion of construction as soon as possible so that the ROW [right of way] can be fully restored and revegetated,” he wrote.

Wild Virginia reviewed 67 inspection reports from between Sept. 19 and Dec. 20, covering work sites in the six Virginia counties — Giles, Craig, Montgomery, Roanoke, Franklin and Pittsylvania — though which the pipeline will pass on its route from northern West Virginia to Chatham.

Three of the inspections found that Mountain Valley had not installed erosion control devices as required by the state, Sligh wrote in his letter. In another 19, DEQ officials determined that the devices were not properly maintained. And in at least eight cases, sediment was washed away from the 125-foot -wide construction right of way.

The problems came after Mountain Valley suspended work on parts of the pipeline after Wild Virginia and other groups raised questions in a lawsuit about the project’s impact on endangered or threatened species of fish and bats in its path.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s approval for the pipeline, which was followed Oct. 15 by an order from FERC that all pipeline work cease, except for stabilization and erosion control efforts.

Although other legal challenges have led to the suspension of two other sets of federal permits, Mountain Valley says it expects to obtain new approvals in time to complete the 303-mile pipeline by the end of the year.

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

See also: Updated Status of Principal Legal Challenges to the ACP Now Available, Allegheny Blue Ridge Alliance, Update #267, March 12, 2020 — The new update on the status of the principal legal challenges to the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) is now available on the ABRA website.

.... 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

Solar farms are growing electric power across Virginia

From an Article by Laurence Hammack, Roanoke Times, November 23, 2019

The first industrial-scale solar farm to produce electricity for Appalachian Power Co. has been approved by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.

Construction of the Depot Solar Center in Campbell County is expected to begin in the spring and be completed by the end of the year, according to Ryan Gilchrist of Coronal Energy, a private company that will operate the facility.

The rows of solar panels on a 150-acre site near Rustburg will provide 15 megawatts of electricity to Appalachian, which is shifting its power generation from coal-burning power plants to more renewable energy.

“Virginia is adopting solar technology at record rates, and we are building an economy that is cleaner and greener as a result,” Gov. Ralph Northam said in a statement last month that announced the VA DEQ approval of four other solar farms.

Although about 1,000 of Appalachian’s 500,000-plus Virginia customers have solar panels at their homes or businesses, a power-purchase agreement with Coronal marks the utility’s first venture into industrial-scale solar power.

Appalachian Power is considering bids from other energy companies for more large-scale projects that will add another 200 megawatts of solar to its power portfolio, spokesman John Shepelwich said.

The utility currently gets about 60% of its electricity from coal. Another 19% comes from natural gas, 11% from hydroelectric and 7% from wind turbines.

After the Campbell County Board of Supervisors granted a special use permit last year, the Depot Solar Center went to VA DEQ for consideration of its environmental impacts.

In a Nov. 5 letter to the company, VA DEQ approved the permit with several conditions, including tree-cutting requirements to protect bats, monitoring for invasive species and landscape protection measures.

In recent years, VA DEQ has approved 39 permits for solar farms in Virginia. Thirteen of them have been built so far and are producing a total of about 400 megawatts, enough to power nearly 100,000 homes.

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

See also: Virginia could soon have more than 2,500 MW of solar. We just need customers | Power for the People VA by Ivy Main, September 12, 2017

Holden Dometrius arrested on Little Mountain near Lindside, WV

From an Article by Laurence Hammack, Roanoke Times, April 24, 2019

A state regulation that delayed a key part of work on the Mountain Valley Pipeline — the crossings of more than 1,000 streams and wetlands in the two Virginias — has been revised in a way likely to benefit the project.

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection wrote in a letter Wednesday to federal regulators that it has modified about 50 conditions to permits issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

One of the conditions was that the pipeline needed to be built across four major rivers in West Virginia within 72 hours. The Army Corps improperly bypassed that rule when it issued what’s called a Nationwide Permit 12 to the natural gas project, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in throwing out the authorization in October.

Although several more steps need to be taken before water body crossings can resume, a revised condition doing away with the time restriction in certain cases was seen as a victory for Mountain Valley.

However, complications from another court challenge involving a different pipeline in Virginia led one of the five partners in the joint Mountain Valley venture to say this week that completion of the project by the end of this year now “appears unlikely.”

Rebecca Kujawa, chief financial officer of NextEra Energy Inc., made her comments in a report on first quarter results posted to the company’s website.

Construction of Mountain Valley, which began last year, is expected to ramp up in the coming months following a winter lull, Kujawa said. But she expressed concerns about a 4th Circuit decision last year that prohibited the Atlantic Coast Pipeline from crossing the Appalachian Trail.

The Mountain Valley pipeline would also cross the scenic footpath, and backers worry that the project could be jeopardized by the Atlantic Coast ruling. “We are continuing to work through options with our partners and will provide a further update in the near future,” Kujawa said.

Natalie Cox, a spokeswoman for Mountain Valley, said Thursday that there have been no announced changes to the company’s most recent goal of a late 2019 completion date.

“However, in light of the ongoing permit challenges, the window to achieve these targets is becoming more narrow,” she wrote in an email. “The team has been pursuing options and alternatives that would address the outstanding issues and, if realized within the next few months, would allow for” completion late this year.

When work on the 303-mile pipeline began a year ago, plans were to have it done by late 2018. As for the Nationwide Permit process, Cox said, the next step will be for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to review the modified conditions from West Virginia. Then the Army Corps will do the same.

Pipeline opponents were quick to react to the move, staging a protest early Thursday morning in which a man chained himself to equipment along the pipeline’s construction right of way in Lindside, West Virginia.

“To hell with your permits,” read a banner attached to a piece of welding equipment to which 22-year-old Holden Dometrius had locked himself, according to a news release from Appalachians Against Pipelines. After several hours of blocking work, Dometrius was removed by law enforcement officials.

The organization, which has been affiliated with more than dozen such blockades in West Virginia and Southwest Virginia, said the pipeline “endangers water, ecosystems, and communities along its route, contributes to climate change, increases demand for natural gas (and therefore fracking), and is entrenched in corrupt political processes.”

A clerk in the Monroe County Magistrate’s Court said Dometrius faces a felony charge of threatening terrorism and three misdemeanors: trespassing, obstruction and tampering with equipment. Dometrius, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was being held in jail in lieu of an $8,000 cash bond Thursday afternoon, the clerk said.

In October, the 4th Circuit vacated a Nationwide Permit 12 issued for a portion of the pipeline running through West Virginia. A legal challenge brought by the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations asserted that the Army Corps overlooked a requirement, imposed by the state’s environmental agency, that work on four major river crossings be completed within 72 hours to limit potential environmental harm.

Mountain Valley has said that digging trenches across the river bottoms for its 42-inch diameter pipe would take four to six weeks.

Two similar stream-crossing permits — one for Southwest Virginia and another for a second part of West Virginia — were suspended by the Army Corps days after the court ruling.

But by the time of the court’s opinion, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection had already initiated changes to address the court’s concerns. The department invited public comments in August — after the court had issued a stay to stream crossings in response to the Sierra Club’s lawsuit, which was later lifted — on a number of revisions to state conditions to the Army Corps’ permits, including one that removed the 72-hour time restriction in certain cases.

Concerns by regulators date back to Mountain Valley’s original plan to use a so-called “wet open cut” process to run the pipeline across streams and wetlands. That entails digging a ditch along the bottom of a flowing stream, and can lead to large amounts of sediment and other forms of pollution being washed downstream.

The company has since changed plans. It now proposes to use a dry-cut method, in which a temporary dam diverts the water from half of the river’s width while construction crews dig a trench for the pipe along the exposed river bed. The process is then repeated on the other half of the river.

While the dry-cut method takes longer than 72 hours, it poses less of an environmental risk, the Department of Environmental Protection said in explaining why it was removing the time restriction.

Appalachian Mountain Advocates, a nonprofit law firm that represented the Sierra Club in the 4th Circuit case, objected to the department’s plans during the written public comment period. In the past, a Sierra Club representative did not rule out the possibility of additional litigation if the Army Corps reissues its Nationwide Permit 12.

For Mountain Valley to get the $4.6 billion project fully back on track, it must still win approval from a second federal agency. The U.S. Forest Service had approved the pipeline to pass through about 3.5 miles of the Jefferson National Forest. That authorization was struck down last year by the 4th Circuit, which ruled that the agency failed to take into account expected problems with erosion and sedimentation.

The appeals court ruling sent the permit back to the Forest Service for reconsideration in July. Since then, the agency has said little about the process, other than it was “developing its response” to the issues identified by the court.

The Forest Service has also not responded to a Freedom of Information Act request seeking more information, which was filed in January by The Roanoke Times.

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

“Hell With Your Permits — Work Stopped At MVP Site In WV, Protester Charged with Felony” | Blue Virginia, April 25, 2019

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

Three (3) Protesters Arrested After Binding to MVP Equipment, WSET, June 5, 2018

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

The 1640 MW coal-fired Chesterfield Power Plant is on the James River near Richmond, VA

From an Article by Sarah Vogelsong, Virginia Mercury, March 19, 2019

A proposed new natural gas-fired power plant in Charles City County, which, if built, would be among the largest power generators in the state, has sparked few objections, even as other new gas infrastructure has faced a contentious path to approval.

Only three people spoke at a hearing hosted by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality March 5 on the granting of a “prevention of significant deterioration” permit for the planned Chickahominy Power Station.

The permits are required for the construction of any new air pollution source that emits more than 100 tons per year of any of a set of pollutants identified by DEQ, including sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and particulate matter, among others.

For Charles City Supervisor Bill Coada, who attended DEQ’s March 5 hearing, there was little to fear from the proposed natural gas power station. “Of course we have concerns about the air quality,” he said. But, he added, “if you compare it to a coal-fired unit, you’ll find these are much cleaner.”

The Chickahominy Power Station is being developed by Chickahominy Power, LLC, a subsidiary of Balico, LLC, that was formed for the purpose of developing and operating the facility. Plans submitted to the State Corporation Commission and DEQ describe it as a combined-cycle natural gas generation facility with three turbines that will be capable of producing 1,650 megawatts. By comparison, Dominion Energy’s recently finished Greensville combined cycle power station is 1,588 megawatts and the company’s coal-fired Chesterfield Power Station is the largest fossil-fuel plant in Virginia at 1,640 megawatts.

As an independent power producer, Chickahominy would sell its power directly to the PJM Interconnection wholesale market. Located just over half a mile east of the intersection of Chambers and Roxbury Roads, the project’s 185-acre site surrounds Dominion Energy’s existing Chickahominy Substation and is crossed by two of Dominion’s transmission lines and a Virginia Natural Gas pipeline.

Documents from DEQ show that of 10 proposed emission constituents, seven are above the threshold set by the department to classify a facility as a major stationary source of the pollutant. These include three types of particulate matter, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds and carbon dioxide equivalents.

Mary Finley-Brook, an associate professor of geography and environmental science at the University of Richmond aired concerns about the level of emissions that the plant is expected to produce at the March 5 hearing and recommended that the project be sent to the State Air Pollution Control Board for review.

“The one actually that concerns me the most would be the greenhouse gas emissions, so the carbon dioxide equivalent,” she told DEQ. “One of the main reasons why I think this permit should be rejected is because we are looking to limit our greenhouse gas emissions from our fossil-fuel sector.”

Steve Fuhrmann of Providence Forge also cited worries about emissions. “We already have a higher incidence than normal of both [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] and asthma in this county, and any additions to our polluting atmosphere … is of great concern,” he said. (VDH maps show that relative to other areas of Virginia, Charles City County and the surrounding region show higher incidences of asthma.)

An engineering report by DEQ has found that “approval of the proposed permit is not expected to cause injury to or interference with … health.” As a further safeguard, the department has also attached to its draft permit the requirement that the facility carry out continuous emissions monitoring, which will constantly track and record the pollutants the power station is producing.

A ‘sudden surge of interest’ in new power production

Still, for some residents, the proposed Chickahominy Power Station is only the tip of the iceberg.

The project is the third major energy generator proposed for the county in the span of four years. In 2015, the Board of Supervisors approved a special use permit for the C4GT power station, another natural gas facility that Michigan-based NOVI Energy says it plans to develop on 88 acres less than a mile from the Chickahominy facility.

The C4GT facility, which has not begun construction (earlier this month, the SCC granted its certificate of public convenience and necessity a two-year extension), has a planned capacity of 1,060 megawatts.

Finally, this spring, the board is considering ambitious plans by Utah-based sPower to construct a 340-megawatt solar farm on more than 2,000 acres of land previously used for timber. While that project has not yet received the special use permit it needs to move forward in the county, the Charles City Planning Commission showed little opposition to it, voting 5-1-1 to recommend its approval.

If all three facilities are built, Charles City County will become one of Virginia’s biggest power producers, according to data collected by DEQ. “Geography has dictated this sudden surge of interest in Charles City County,” Coada said.

Balico director of development Jef Freeman, Jr., said growth in Virginia’s data centers is a primary driver of Balico’s interest in the Chickahominy project. “It’s really driven by the economic activity that’s going on in the region,” he said. “Data centers themselves require significant amounts of energy to support what they do and very reliable power.”

However, many of the companies building data centers are increasingly pushing to power them with renewable energy.

Charles City County, for its part, has highlighted the desire to develop its industrial assets in its 2014 Comprehensive Plan, which calls for the creation of a second industrial park, industrial reserve areas and a new industrial corridor overlay district.

Still, the handful of residents at the March 5 hearing expressed qualms about how the combination of new power generators might affect air quality overall.

Stanley Faggert, the DEQ’s minor new source review coordinator, said the agency had included the projected emissions from the C4GT plant in its air quality modeling for the Chickahominy Power Station. “We do model the background and we take into account existing sources around the facility,” said Michael Dowd, DEQ’s Air and Renewable Energy Division director. “It’s something we look at carefully.”

Fuhrmann asked that if DEQ decides to grant the permit, it take steps to do additional monitoring, as the closest monitoring station, at Shirley Plantation, sits in the opposite direction from prevailing winds relative to the Chickahominy Power Station. Dowd, however, said that the Shirley monitoring station “is darn close as far as monitoring goes” and observed that “many of these air quality impacts are regional in nature and not local.”

For Coada, the question comes down to not only the need for Charles City County to expand economically, but Virginia’s broader attempts to embrace clean energy. “When you look at what it’s replacing,” he said, “it’s actually doing the commonwealth a favor.”

Not everyone agrees. Thomas Hadwin, a former electric and gas utility executive in New York and Michigan who lives in Waynesboro, said that approval of the project “may not be good energy policy in the long run.”

Besides emitting significant amounts of greenhouse gases, he said, the plant would consume a large amount of Virginia Natural Gas’ supply to the region, which VNG has indicated is constrained. Furthermore, Hadwin questioned whether the demand exists in Virginia for two new major natural gas plants.

PJM, the regional transmission organization that coordinates wholesale electricity in all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia, including Virginia, is expecting capacity to significantly outstrip demand in the near future, according to data from the organization. Dominion has said it has no plans to build new combined-cycle natural gas facilities.

And C4GT, which this March petitioned the SCC to extend its certificate of public convenience and necessity for an additional two years, justified the project’s delay on the basis of “unexpected change in market for additional electric generating capacity.”

“These people are trying to move into a marketplace that’s already flooded with capacity,” said Hadwin.

Freeman, however, said that Chickahominy Power would not be pursuing a project that it didn’t think was viable. “There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes to determine this kind of project,” he said, adding that “even with the two projects that are proposed, neither are assured of proceeding.”

The comment period for the VA-DEQ’s draft permit for the Chickahominy Power Station ended on March 20, 2019.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, December 7, 2018

ATTORNEY GENERAL HERRING AND THE VIRGINIA D.E.Q. FILE LAWSUIT OVER REPEATED ENVIRONMENTAL VIOLATIONS DURING CONSTRUCTION OF MOUNTAIN VALLEY PIPELINE

~ Complaint cites numerous instances in which MVP failed to adequately control erosion, sediment, and stormwater runoff in violation of state environmental laws and regulations and the project’s Clean Water Act Section 401 Certification ~

RICHMOND (December 7, 2018)—Attorney General Mark R. Herring and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality today announced the filing of a lawsuit against Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC for repeated environmental violations in Craig, Franklin, Giles, Montgomery, and Roanoke Counties, particularly violations that occurred during significant rain events over the last year. The suit alleges that MVP violated the Commonwealth’s environmental laws and regulations as well as MVP’s Clean Water Act Section 401 Water Quality Certification by failing to control sediment and stormwater runoff resulting in impacts to waterways and roads. The suit seeks the maximum allowable civil penalties and a court order to force MVP to comply with environmental laws and regulations. The matter was referred to the Office of Attorney General by the Director of the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) after numerous inspections identified violations at multiple construction sites.

“This suit alleges serious and numerous violations of environmental laws that caused unpermitted impacts to waterways and roads in multiple counties in Southwest Virginia,” said Attorney General Herring. “We’re asking the court for an enforceable order that will help us ensure compliance going forward, and for penalties for MVP’s violations.”

“The Northam administration has empowered DEQ to pursue the full course of action necessary to enforce Virginia’s environmental standards and to protect our natural resources,” said DEQ Director David Paylor. “In this case, we determined referral to the Office of the Attorney General was prudent in order to seek faster resolution to these violations. We appreciate the Attorney General’s coordination to ensure necessary compliance.”

The complaint against MVP alleges that DEQ inspectors identified violations of environmental laws, regulations, and permits in May, June, July, August, September, and October 2018 while investigating complaints it had received. In addition, an inspection company contracted by DEQ to monitor MVP’s compliance identified more than 300 violations between June and mid-November 2018, mostly related to improper erosion control and stormwater management.

Among the laws that MVP is alleged to have violated are:
1. the State Water Control Law, 2. the Virginia Stormwater Management Act, 3. the Erosion and Sediment Control Law, 4. the Virginia Stormwater Management Program Regulation, 5. the Erosion and Sediment Control Regulations, 6. the Virginia Water Protection Permit Program Regulations, 7. Section 401 Water Quality Certification 17-001 issued to MVP, 8. MVP’s Annual Standards and Specifications, 9. MVP’s Site Specific Erosion and Sediment Control Plan and 10. MVP’s Site Specific Stormwater Management Plans.

The suit alleges ten counts of illegal actions by MVP:
>> Unpermitted Discharge
>> Failure to Maintain and Repair Erosion and Sediment Control Structures
>> Failure to Repair Erosion and Sediment Controls within Required Timeframe
>> Failure to Apply Temporary or Permanent Stabilization
>> Sediment off of Right of Way
>> Failure to Install Clean Water Diversions
>> Failure to Keep a Daily Log of Activity Documenting Project Activities Related to Environmental Permit Compliance and Corrective >> Measures Implemented
>> Failure to Install Adequate Channel, Flume, or Slope Drain Structure
>> Failure to Construct Vehicular Stream Crossing
>> Failure to Maintain Access Roads

The case has been filed in Henrico County Circuit Court and a copy of the complaint is available here.

CONTACT: Charlotte Gomer, OAG, (804)786-1022 desk,
cgomer@oag.state.va.us

Blue Ridge Mountains & Shenandoah Valley

From Rick Webb, Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition, December 20, 2017

In the last two weeks, the Virginia State Water Control Board made important decisions about both the Mountain Valley Pipeline and the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. There has been confusion about exactly what the Board’s decisions said and what they mean for future actions on both projects.

Although the Board acted illegally by issuing certifications without all of the information needed to ensure water quality protections, the Board did not simply accept the VA-DEQ’s misleading recommendations in favor of the proposed projects. Of most importance, the Board recognized what citizens have said for months – that it did not have all of the information needed to support final approvals and felt it necessary to reserve authority for future actions.

In the case of the MVP, the water quality certification allows the Board to revisit the issue of water body crossings instead of simply relying on a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers blanket approval.

In the case of the ACP, the water quality certification delays construction until essential plans and studies, including erosion and sediment control, stormwater management, and karst analysis, are completed and submitted to the Board for approval.

A positive outcome will depend on proper reviews by the VA-DEQ, meaningful opportunity for public critique and input, and appropriate Board response to remaining deficiencies.

For more information and perspective, see What Did the State Water Control Board Do?

Rick Webb, Program Coordinator

Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition

rwebb.481@gmail.com

People Over Pipelines

We have a Report from Erin McKelvy. Erin is a resident of the Blacksburg VA area and an affiliate of Blue Ridge Rapid Response Project (or BRRRP) and is helping to organize the “Stop The Pipelines Action Camp” in that area from July 13-17th, 2017. The action camp is being organized in hopes to spread resistance to the Mountain Valley & Atlantic Coast Pipelines that are traversing Appalachian West Virginia, Virginia and, in the MVP’s case, North Carolina. We talk about what it is to live in a place and defend your home, to get to know your neighbors, to build the skills needed to resist ecocidal, capitalist infrastructure projects.

More info at https://blueridgerapidresponse.wordpress.com or contact blueridgerapidresponse@gmail.com

The event is being co-sponsored by Smokey Mountain Eco-Defense (SMED).

New industry sponsored pipeline security is being pursued by mercenary groups like “TigerSwan” as well as industry-sponsored astro-turf (or fake grassroots) group “YourEnergy” meant to muddy the water of community resistance to pipeline expansion and other infrastructural projects.

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

Virginia DEQ Programs: Water Protection for Pipelines, June 1, 2017

Due to the size and scope of proposed natural gas pipeline projects in Virginia, DEQ is developing additional requirements to ensure that Virginia water quality standards are maintained in all areas affected by the construction of these pipelines.

VA-DEQ will require Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) and Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) to provide detailed plans to assess whether construction activities in adjacent areas will adversely affect water quality during construction and to ensure that water quality is maintained into the future. This additional certification goes well beyond other regulatory requirements and will protect water quality across the range of pipeline activities, not just temporary construction impacts to streams and wetlands.

The types of additional information developers must provide relate to environmental concerns such as karst geologic features, steep slopes, public water supplies and areas prone to rockslides. See main article sidebar, Request for Information (RFI) for ACP and MVP.

Once VA-DEQ has evaluated this information, it will develop additional water quality conditions and will give the public an opportunity to review and comment on these certification conditions. VA-DEQ also will hold public hearings on the draft certifications. Once the comment period has concluded, VA-DEQ will prepare a report and recommendations on the certification conditions for the State Water Control Board’s consideration.

VA-DEQ will hold three public hearings for Atlantic Coast Pipeline and two for Mountain Valley Pipeline.

In summary, five regulatory and review tools provide comprehensive oversight and thorough technical evaluation to ensure that Virginia’s water quality is protected.

Environmental impact review.

VA-DEQ, along with Virginia’s other natural resource agencies, submitted numerous comments and recommendations on the draft environmental impact statements published by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for these pipelines. For example, Virginia identified specific concerns in a number of stream segments crossing watersheds. Virginia recommended additional pre- and post-construction water quality monitoring, heightened erosion and sedimentation control practices, and/or pre-impact characterization of proposed stream and wetland crossings.

Stormwater, erosion and sediment control.

VA-DEQ is requiring each pipeline developer to submit detailed, project-specific erosion and sedimentation control and stormwater plans for every foot of land disturbance related to pipeline construction, including access roads and construction lay-down areas. These plans must comply with Virginia’s stormwater and erosion and sediment control regulations that are designed to protect water quality during and after construction. These plans will be reviewed by qualified professionals (either VA-DEQ staff or third-party engineers) and will be posted for public review. An engineering consulting firm will assist in VA-DEQ’s review of the erosion and stormwater plans. The cost of this work is estimated to be approximately $2.2 million.

Federal wetlands and stream regulation.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) is the federal regulatory partner in permitting dredge and fill activities in wetlands and streams. The Corps’ Nationwide Permit (NWP) 12 requires that water quality is protected during the construction of pipelines in wetlands and streams. The Corps will evaluate each wetland and stream crossing to see if it is consistent with the conditions of NWP 12. Because the Corps’ permit only covers construction activities that cross a wetland or stream, VA-DEQ is addressing other water quality impacts through its water certification authority. The conditions provided in NWP 12 are comprehensive and include: coordination with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on threatened and endangered species; requirements to restore the pre-construction conditions at stream crossings using materials that mimic the natural stream bed; mitigation for all permanent loss over 1/10 acre and/or 300 linear feet of waters; a recommendation discouraging directional drilling in karst topography; a recommendation to use Virginia native species for revegetation; and extensive guidance and requirements for countersinking pipes.

Virginia water quality certification.

VA-DEQ will require water quality certification conditions for all potentially impacted water resources related to activities that may affect water quality outside the temporary construction impacts to stream and wetland crossings. These will provide reasonable assurance that water quality standards are maintained in Virginia’s streams. Once VA-DEQ has evaluated this information, it will develop additional water quality conditions and will give the public an opportunity to review and comment on these conditions. VA-DEQ also will hold public hearings on the draft conditions. Once the comment period has ended, VA-DEQ will recommend certification conditions for the State Water Control Board’s consideration.

Water quality monitoring.

VA-DEQ will conduct its own water quality monitoring of the pipeline projects to ensure water quality standards are maintained.

NOTE: See the schedule for public hearings and other information on the VA-DEQ website.