by Jon Sokolow
In a powerful statement published by Blue Virginia here for the first time, the Virginia State Chapter of the NAACP has called on the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality to halt all construction activity for both the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast Pipelines. [note: photo to the right is of Reverend Kevin Chandler, President of the Virginia NAACP, at the Union Hill Grove Baptist Church in Buckingham, VA]
The state NAACP statement was submitted to the Virginia State Water Control Board on May 30 as part of a public comment period on the proposed pipelines. It was among thousands of comments submitted by concerned citizens and environmental and community organizations. The NAACP statement has remained hidden from public view because DEQ has failed to publish the “public” comments, pointing to an unspecified security “issue” with its website and the time needed to “process” so many comments. DEQ’s lack of transparency left the NAACP statement and similar submissions largely unavailable – until now. It is yet another example of what has been called DEQ’s broken regulatory process under its longtime director, David Paylor.
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