Four actions: Call & write your legislators. Sign the 2 petitions below.
Recent decisions by the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to allow the Corps of Engineers to review the water body crossings as part of the Nationwide 12 permit process does not provide a stringent nor thorough review of the stream, river and wetlands crossings by the two major pipelines in Virginia.
This is an unwise and unnecessary abdication of authority by DEQ to the Corps of Engineers. Virginia has a strong program for review of construction plans for water body crossings under the Erosion Control and Stormwater Management regulations. The DEQ is responsible for protecting our State waters and should take charge of the water quality reviews for the 401 certifications for the pipelines.
In order to pressure DEQ into reviewing the water crossings, it is imperative, URGENT, that we contact as many State legislators as possible in the next two weeks. DEQ needs to make a decision soon on this issue.
The message is simple: Ask your legislator(s) to contact the DEQ Director, David Paylor, to ask him to direct DEQ staff to perform water quality reviews for the water body crossings, including streams, rivers, headwaters and wetlands. When people call their legislator, they should ask them to ask DEQ to perform the stream crossing reviews for the 401 Clean Water certifications. It’s DEQ’s job to perform the water quality reviews for the 401 certifications. Not the Corps of Engineers.
Please follow up with your legislator after the initial call to confirm that the legislator made the request to DEQ and what was the outcome of that request.
Access phone numbers for Senators and Delegates, and emails for House Delegates. Email addresses for Senators is district__@senate.virginia.gov. Put the District number in the blank space for each Senator. Conatact information – click for files:
Senate members 2017
Petition to DEQ:
https://sierra.secure.force.com/actions/Virginia?actionId=AR0080122
Petition to Legislators:
https://sierra.secure.force.com/actions/Virginia?actionId=AR0080642
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