A lobbyist for the natural gas industry told West Virginia legislators Tuesday that progress on a pipeline that stretches through the Mountain State was slowed because of “rogue environmental groups” challenging the project in the federal court system.
In reality, Dominion Energy has halted construction after the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found environmental regulatory groups were bypassing rules meant to protect people, wildlife and the environment in the path of such large-scale projects.
No doubt Dominion will continue to pursue the Atlantic Coast Pipeline once these legal hurdles are cleared, but for representatives of the industry to blame “rogue” environmentalists is dishonest and simply wrong.
As DJ Gerken, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, which is a party in the case, put it: “It’s the federal agencies who went rogue here. They ignored the law, they ignored warnings from their own experts to approve a destructive and unnecessary pipeline.”
There are a few pipeline projects underway that cross through West Virginia, including national forest land, to tap into the Marcellus Shale formation over which the state sits. Both state and federal agencies have gone out of their way to make the projects easier for the companies putting them together. Those are the types of actions that result in industrial disasters that harm the people and the environment these projects plow through.
Unsurprisingly, some have already been cited numerous times for violations as they try to get the pipelines built. A joint investigative report from the Gazette-Mail and ProPublica found that government regulators bent over backwards to get these projects approved quickly, which is perhaps why they’re having so much trouble in court.
It is not a “rogue” action to hold companies and government agencies accountable to the minimal rules in place to protect quality of life. West Virginia has suffered enough of industry run amok. Ask the people in McDowell and Wyoming counties, who, in 2019, can’t rely on anything close to resembling clean water coming out of their pipes because of industrial pollution and failing infrastructure, if they think it’s extremist for energy companies and the government to follow the rules.
The suggestion to the Legislature offered up by lobbyist Bob Orndorff that the body pass a resolution condemning the environmental groups pursuing litigation is insulting. These groups trying to protect their rights are made up of actual West Virginians who want to preserve what they have and avoid being steamrolled by big industry. Their government should be watching out for them, but it’s not, so the only way to stand up for themselves is through the courts.
Remember it’s the people who are the David in this scenario, not the Goliath.
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