Virginia’s Director of Natural Resources has warned Dominion that state regulators will not be swayed by company requests or suggestions when deciding whether to issue permits for construction of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. That’s good news for pipeline opponents, but they say Dominion is using other questionable tactics at the local level as Sandy Hausman reports.
Charlie Spatz is with a non-profit in Northern Virginias called the Climate Investigation Center. He’s heard about public hearings In Buckingham County that attracted large crowds to speak against the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.
“Buckingham County is the site of a 57,000 horsepower compressor station, and I’ve heard concerns about noise levels and pollution,” he says.
And when the board of supervisors voted unanimously to allow the project, Spatz heard complaints from residents who wondered how that was possible. Here, for example, is Pastor Paul Wilson, whose church sits near the pipeline’s proposed path. He attended a public hearing and left feeling angry.
“I guess over a hundred people spoke against the pipeline,” he recalls. ” The board of supervisors and the people on the planning commission – they never listened to us. It was obvious from the very beginning that Dominion manipulates the whole process!”
So Spatz sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the county, asking for all correspondence with Dominion. What he found was a cordial relationship between local officials, the town’s largest employer, Kyanite Mining, and Dominion. As early as June of 2015, Dominion was meeting with Buckingham officials at Kyanite to plan for the pipeline, followed by lunch at a local restaurant. The firm, which mines industrial minerals, could profit from a cheap supply of natural gas, and Pastor Wilson says it looks the like Kyanite will get that.
WVLT FM – Sandy Hausman – 07/05/2017
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