Since before he took office in January, opponents of the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast pipelines, including a list of lawmakers and officials from his own party, have begged and cajoled Gov. Ralph Northam to get tougher on the contentious natural gas projects.

Work on both pipelines is now at least temporarily stalled amid court rulings that have vacated key approvals from federal agencies, which appear to have left those permits vulnerable to legal challenge by rushing their way through the review process.

And with the State Water Control Board meeting next week to consider whether it should require additional scrutiny for the spots where the pipelines will blast, trench or drill across and under Virginia waterways, it could be an opportune time, probably the last chance, for Northam to finally insist on the rigorous environmental review he promised on the campaign trail.

Atlantic has yet to begin construction in Virginia, but the Mountain Valley project has already proven itself incapable of handling the sediment laden runoff from construction that opponents warned the Department of Environmental Quality and the board about during the water quality review last year.

The exposure of the slipshod nature of how federal agencies handled the permitting process combined with the on-the-ground performance, or lack thereof, of measures intended to keep mud from running off the MVP work areas, have knocked big holes in the narrative that the pipeline developers have been spinning, which is that regulators have left no stone unturned in reviewing the projects.

If past is prologue though, don’t expect Northam to seize the moment.

Read more at Virginia Mercury

by Robert Zullo   August 16, 2018