PRESS ADVISORY
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
CHARLOTTESVILLE – On Wednesday, December 5, 2018, Friends of Buckingham and a coalition of environmental organizations and community leaders will meet outside Charlottesville Dominion headquarters to protest and condemn the decision of Gov Ralph Northam to remove 2 air board members during a contentious air permitting process for the proposed Buckingham compressor station, the only one located in Virginia for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. We call him out for interfering with the regulatory agencies he has professed to have great faith in for mediating a fair and reasonable review process. While it may have been technically within the Governor’s rights to replace members of this board, it is unethical to interfere this way with regulatory decision-making.
This air permit is one of the last big hurdles for starting construction in Virginia of the unneeded Atlantic Coast Pipeline, that would enrich Dominion stock holders in the short term, and steal an estimated over $2.3 billion from the rate payers to pay for it. This is a robbery, of our land through the abuse of eminent domain, of our clean air, our water, our lives, our health and our climate. The ACP would be responsible for nearly 68 million metric tons of climate pollution annually, equivalent to 20 coal plants or 14 million vehicles on the road; and 1/3 of the allowance for RGGI, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative that the Virginia air board is considering joining. With the IPCC sounding the climate crisis alarm that we have 12 years to drastically change our course, we see this is not only irresponsible, but a willful crime of planetcide.
The two dismissed air board members, Rebecca Rubin and Sam Bleicher, had stated environmental justice and climate change impacts must be considered in Air Board permit decisions. There is an undeniable pattern of dangerous, toxic-polluting industry being sited in low-income communities of color across our nation. “Environmental racism” is a phrase used to describe this systematic positioning.
On Aug. 16, the governor’s own Advisory Council on Environmental Justice called for a moratorium on the ACP until completion of serious investigations of credible environmental justice issues. Governor Ralph Northam, Secretary of Natural Resources Matt Strickler, Attorney General Mark Herring, Department of Environmental Quality Director David Paylor and Dominion Energy CEO Tom Farrell need to acknowledge that environmental justice matters now — this must not to be postponed to future energy development decisions.
Southern Environmental Law Center sent a letter on behalf of Friends of Buckingham to the air board and Director Paylor, expressing concern that Dominion inserted new information into the review process after the close of the comment period, foregoing any public review or comment; information that is fraught with inaccuracies, at best.
Apparently, at the 11th hour, Dominion was concerned about not meeting VA statute environmental justice requirements for the impacted Union Hill community in immediate proximity to the proposed compressor station and thus, Dominion recently offered the community $5.1 million in unrelated community development projects. We have heard the original offer was $15 million… We call this Project Bribe. And still no evacuation plan. For four years we have asked for an evacuation plan for this behemoth, industrial, highly toxic, highly explosive 54,000+ hp, high pressure, fracked gas compressor station, an easy terrorist target, with at minimum a 1 mile radius incineration zone. And Dominion dangles a community center and a few paid first responders, who, by the way, can do nothing for an explosion but watch it burn. This is classic environmental injustice on display, and this is they way Dominion is used to getting its way across our state, with bribery. We say, not on our watch!
We are clear that Dominion would not be able to obtain permits through a truthful review process. We have only to look at the unchecked devastation already wreaked by the Mountain Valley Pipeline to see what we could look forward to if the ACP air permit is approved. Where is our Attorney General Mark Herring? Lawyer Tammy Belinsky’s statement, from a press release last week stated: “The State Water Control Board and the DEQ have failed to protect Virginians from harm to their water, land and livelihoods caused by construction of the MVP. Attorney General Mark Herring has a duty to declare the 401 water quality certification void because the 404 Nationwide 12 permit has been suspended by the Corps of Engineers.”
We the people must lead as our elected leaders appear to be disabled. We concur with Reverend William J. Barber II and Reverend Liz Theoharis of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, that “Somebody has been hurting our people and we won’t be silent anymore.”
Forward together!
The rally will be held as follows:
Date: Wednesday, December 5, 2018
Time: 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Location: Charlottesville Dominion Headquarters
1710 Hydraulic Rd
Charlottesville 22901
Contact: Heidi Dhivya Berthoud
Secretary, Friends of Buckingham
info@friendsofbuckinghamva.org
434 979 9732
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