Monthly Archives: October 2015

Why Released Felons Fail

Posted on October 8, 2015 by | 9 comments

stacked_odds2by Sarah Scarbrough

Society chastises criminals, felons, addicts and others getting out of jail. The average citizen today thinks this population consists of bad guys. Why should people care about repeat offenders? They deserve to be locked up and the key thrown away. But in the next breath, people decry generational cycles of criminality and the high rates of recidivism.

Have you ever thought the two might go hand in hand?

It isn’t easy to escape the cycle. Let me present three situations that will make you think in a different vein – and, if not, at least give you food for thought. The stories below are true; some names have been changed to protect their identity.

Meet Scott. He’s a 39-year-old African American male. Scott met a girl that he really fell for. He was over 18; she was just shy of 18 years old. The girl’s mom didn’t like Scott, not one bit. She threatened him if they didn’t break up. Scott cared too much for the girl to leave her, so the mom filed charges against him for having sex with her underage daughter. At this point, in 1998, Scott was put behind bars. Criminality began with narcotics and related charges over the next 18 years.

Scott just finished serving 24 months for a hit and run. While he was locked up this time he did everything he could to rehabilitate himself. He worked extremely hard, and seven days a week. Many people recognized his work and he received constant commendations. As Scott neared release, however, he had nowhere to go. He literally was going to be homeless after release. He did not have one single person to call for help, not even someone to pick him up after he was released. He had four t-shirts and three boxers to his name – that is it. No socks, shoes, or pants. No money either, not a penny.

Scott seemed destined to live on the street corner somewhere, maybe under a bridge if it was raining. Fortunately, he was such a hard worker and had reached out for help to so many jail staff while incarcerated that donations came in like crazy. (The picture above shows the donations.) He received two bus tickets as well. But he was had nowhere to live. Not only did he not have money to fund a place, but he was a sex offender, making it close to impossible to find his own place. Because he was going to be on state supervision, he was set up to stay in a local hotel. Between the donations, including some non-perishable food items, and the hotel, we thought he would do OK. Little did we know the continued obstacles he would face.

Scott had no refrigerator or microwave in his hotel room, thus preparing food was tough. He did not have any money – literally not a dime. How was he supposed to eat? Open a a can of green beans and eat straight out of the can. Or eat protein bars for all three meals? He could not eat the mac ‘n cheese because he couldn’t heat the noodles. There were roaches covering his hotel room – on the first morning at the hotel he killed over 50 roaches (not an exaggeration). He needed to get a state ID to get food stamps. Well, the ID costs $15. He then needed a document from the Virginia State Police to get the ID. That cost $30. With no money, how could he get these items? Without these items he couldn’t get food stamps. Without the food stamps, he could not to eat. Without an ID he couldn’t get a job either. Wow, talk about setting someone up for failure. No wonder some many people have trouble breaking the cycle.

Fortunately, someone he networked with while in jail took Scott under his wing. His friend paid for the ID and the state police document, bought him McDonalds for lunch on the day of release, and bought him Wendy’s for lunch the next day. Wow, thank goodness he found this person. But not everyone in Scott’s position finds someone to help. If he hadn’t had this person helping him, it would have been next to impossible to escape the cycle. Sadly, the person who took Scott under his wing stated to me via text, “He seems depressed. He’s been institutionalized. He’s on his own, with nobody and he’s lonely. To top it off, HE KNOWS HE HAD IT BETTER IN JAIL.”

Wow, he had it better in jail. But it makes sense. Three meals, heat, and a roof over his head with no roaches, all of his basic needs were taken care of. Despite these obstacles, Scott began working on his forklift certificate after release, got a job interview in two days seven days after release, and landed another job interview later in the week. This is awesome. But how hard will it be for Scott to succeed considering everything is working against him? Continue reading →

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Posted in Poverty & income gap

Spilt Milk

Posted on October 7, 2015 by | 11 comments

spilt_milkJust a reminder, sometimes “settled science” isn’t so settled. Headline from today’s Washington Post: “Is Whole Milk Good for Us After All?”

— JAB

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Posted in Science & Technology

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Speaking of Gay Rights…

Posted on October 7, 2015 by | 11 comments

gay_marriageLike a lot of other Americans, I have been slow to embrace the right of gays to marry. That’s because I respect the sanctity of an institution — marriage as the union between a man and a woman — that evolved over thousands of years. But, ultimately, my libertarian instincts prevailed.

As a libertarian/conservative, I espouse a win-win view of human rights. I don’t think, for example, that there is a fundamental human right to education or health care. Those so-called “rights” are derived, or subsidiary, rights. Financing one person’s “right” to health care can be achieved only by taking someone else’s property, thus harming that person. That’s not to say that society shouldn’t provide health care to all, but universal access to health care is something to be bestowed through legislation, not as a fundamental right.

What is a fundamental right? The right to vote is fundamental. Giving John the right to vote does not deprive Mary of the right to vote. Giving John the right of free speech does not deprive Mary of the right to free speech. Giving John the right to a trial by jury does not deprive Mary of the right to a trial by jury. Giving all citizens equal treatment under the law is a fundamental right.

By the same logic, giving Heather’s mommies the right to be married, along with all the privileges and appurtenances permitted under the law, does not deprive John and Mary of the right to marry.  So, while my heart tells me to support the traditional idea of marriage (not because I’m anti-gay, but because I’m pro-traditional marriage), reason tells me to support gay marriage. In this particular matter, I follow my head over my heart.

— JAB

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Posted in Children and Families, Courts and law

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Why Doesn’t Heather Have Two Daddies?

Posted on October 7, 2015 by | 4 comments

heatherNews from Attorney General Mark R. Herring: Virginia has issued 2,670 marriage licenses and 70 birth certificates to same-sex couples since gay marriage became legal in Virginia a year ago. So reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

The figure that startles me is the 70 birth certificates. Presumably, male same-sex couples are not giving birth (although I suppose it’s possible that gay men could hire surrogates like some heterosexual couples do). According to highly authoritative information I scraped off the first page of Google search results, the number of married gay females nearly equals the number of married gay males nationally. If national trends hold true in Virginia, that implies that about 1,300 gay female couples account for those 70 births. But that’s just a guess. I would be interested to see the break-down of the births by the gender of the parents.

Ignoring the ethical, religious and political dimensions of gays raising children, I’m fascinated from an anthropological perspective. Are gay women more inclined to want children than gay men? (I’m guessing that’s the case: After all, the name of the book was, “Heather Has Two Mommies,” not “Heather Has Two Daddies.”) Do gay women tend to be more nurturing than gay men, just as women are more nurturing than men in the general population? How do gay women decide which spouse bears the child? If they want more than one, do they take turns?

So many questions. This should be a fruitful field of inquiry for an aspiring young social scientist.

— JAB

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Posted in Children and Families

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Fuzzy Thinking at the Top

Posted on October 6, 2015 by | 24 comments
Woolly headed

Woolly headed

by James A. Bacon

Governor Terry McAuliffe views the implementation of the Clean Power Plan as a great opportunity for Virginia to create “green” jobs in solar energy and energy-efficiency while also reducing carbon emissions and head off global warming. “I am working hard with Virginia businesses and environmental leaders to seize this moment to lead for our planet and for our economy,” he wrote in an op-ed piece published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch today.

That’s a fine sentiment. Virginia does need to create more jobs. And McAuliffe correctly perceives that the commonwealth faces momentous decisions regarding its electric system. But there was so much platitudinous thinking in the op-ed that I found it thoroughly discouraging. At the highest level of Virginia government, banalities have replaced substantive thought. Let’s take a look at some of the assaults on reason in the piece.

Job creation. Yes, if Virginia builds more solar plants, installs more solar panels on roofs, and builds more wind-powered turbines, it will create jobs related to the construction and operation of wind and solar power. However, the State Corporation Commission staff said last year that implementing the Clean Power Plan could drive electric rates 20% higher. Higher electric rates would discourage industrial development and take money out of the pockets of business and residential customers, all of which would result in job destruction. The difference is that the new energy jobs would be highly visible while the lost jobs, distributed in dribs and drabs across economy, would be largely invisible. Which effect would outweigh the other? Nobody knows, and anyone who pretends to is just making stuff up.

Environmentalists claim that, if implemented properly, the Clean Power Plan would nudge rates only a little higher, and ratepayers would save enough money through energy conservation that their bills actually would be a little lower than today. Perhaps that’s so. It certainly would be a much more desirable income than a 20% increase in electricity rates. So… let’s see the plan! What combination of programs and strategies will lead to this ideal outcome? How would the McAuliffe administration propose implementing the Clean Power Plan differently than the SCC would, while taking care to ensure a reliable supply of electricity, to avoid that 20% rate increase?

There was no hint in McAuliffe’s op-ed that such hard-nose thinking is even necessary. Chanting, “Rah, rah, green jobs,” is not a plan.

Norfolk flooding. If I hear one more invocation of rising sea levels and increased flooding in Norfolk as justification for spending billions of dollars overhauling Virginia’s energy infrastructure, I think my brain will explode. Here’s what the governor had to say on the subject:

Even before the hurricane headed toward Virginia’s coast, the city of Norfolk was bracing for a greater number of nuisance flooding days over the next year due to higher sea levels and more frequent storm surges. Because Norfolk houses the largest U.S. naval station in the world, this is also an issue of national security.

The Clean Power Plan is recognition of the need for action.

This logic is so woolly headed that if we could shave it, we could put the world’s sheep farmers out of business. The increasing incidence of flooding is a justification for building flood walls, hardening infrastructure, upgrading building codes, eliminating subsidies for flood insurance and reforming land use — not for restructuring Virginia’s electric grid.

The reality is that anything Virginia does to re-engineer its electric grid to reduce CO2 emissions will have an impact on global warming and rising sea levels too small to measure. According to estimates using the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s MAGICC/SCENGEN climate model, the Clean Power Plan will reduce global temperatures about one-one hundredth of a degree (Centigrade) by the year 2100. Virginia’s implementation would account for roughly 1/40th that amount (based on its proportion of the U.S. GDP). To suggest that Virginia, by reducing global temperatures by 1/4,000th of a degree Centigrade, will slow the rate of rising sea levels enough to reduce the impact upon Norfolk is fantasy thinking.

As it happens, there is an argument for implementing the Clean Power Plan: By making the investment, the U.S. can thereby exercise the moral leadership to induce other countries, particularly China, India, to curtail their greenhouse gas emissions. You can choose to accept that argument or not based upon your own partisan and ideological inclinations. But that’s not the argument that McAuliffe offers for supporting the plan.

The future grid. The Obama administration is imposing the Clean Power Plan upon America at a time when the electric power industry is in extraordinary flux, with new technologies and business models threatening to up-end the regulatory structure that has prevailed over the past 80 or so years. The pace of change, and the uncertainty it brings, is unprecedented during the era of regulated utilities. New technologies show enormous promise for replacing fossil fuels. At the same time, given the inherently intermittent nature of those power sources, there are many issues to work out for ensuring the reliability of the electric system, upon which our entire civilization is built. There is little room for error.

There are many profound questions to ponder. Should we invest in large nuclear- and gas-powered power plants with 40-year life spans when solar technology might produce electric power more cheaply within a 5- to 10-year time frame? Should we invest in the current generation of renewable fuels today when the next generation could well cost far less? In either case, we risk saddling Virginia’s electric power system with antiquated and uneconomic capacity. Do we want a big-is-better power system built around large power plants and a robust transmission system, or do we prefer a decentralized, small-is-beautiful approach that may not be as efficient but could be less vulnerable to catastrophic failure? What trade-offs are we willing to make between cost, reliability and the environment?

What path would McAuliffe urge us to take? We don’t know. The Governor offers no clue in his op-ed. Indeed, there are no simple answers to these questions. One way or the other, either we decide what future we want, or we will have a future thrust upon us.

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Posted in Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Environment, Resilience

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A Sign of the Coming Grid Wars

Posted on October 6, 2015 by | 34 comments

the_LV_strip

It happened in Nevada first, but it could come to Virginia eventually — the effort by major electricity consumers to bypass their local utilities and purchase power from wholesale electric markets.

Three big casino companies — Wynn Resorts, MGM Resorts International and Las Vegas Sands — say they could slash millions of dollars from their electric bills if they could buy power directly from merchant power producers, reports the Wall Street Journal. Power-hungry casinos would like to use more renewable energy to live up to commitments to shareholders and customers but they say NV Energy, the monopoly utility, charges too much for green power. They could acquire the energy far cheaper by contracting directly with independent power producers.

NV Energy is doing everything it can to thwart the departure of some of its largest customers, and so far regulators have obliged. But as long as it’s possible to purchase solar power wholesale for 4 cents per kilowatt-hour (and conventional power  for 3.5 cents per kilowatt-hour) and the company charges big commercial clients between 9 and 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, big consumers will have enormous incentive to cut their own deals.

The WSJ didn’t explain the regulators’ thinking, but it should be obvious. The loss of major customers would throw the burden of supporting the vast sunk cost of the existing electric-generating infrastructure onto remaining customers, forcing the utility to raise rates in order to prop up profit margins. And Nevada needs a financially healthy power company to maintain a reliable source of electric power for those who don’t have the size and clout to cut their own deals with merchant power companies.

“The same struggle is occurring across the country,” writes the WSJ, “as large power users watch wholesale energy prices fall while their utility bills rise.” Some states allow residents and businesses to buy their electricity from competitive suppliers. While favoring the power companies, Virginia’s regulatory system does allow options.

Wrote the SCC in its 2015 report on Electric Utility Regulation in September:

The ability of most customers to purchase electric generation service from competing suppliers has been limited. The Regulation Act permits large customers (those exceeding 5 MW of electricity demand) to shop among licensed competitive service providers (“CSP”), and nonresidential customers may apply with the Commission to aggregate load up to the 5 MW threshhold to receive services from a CSP. Residential retail customers currently have the statutory right under the Regulation Act to purchase electric generation service from CSPs selling electric energy “provided 100% from renewable energy.”

The SCC lists 29 such CSPs licensed to sell 100% renewable energy in Virginia.

These retail aggregators can purchase green power from the PJM wholesale market, of which Virginia is a part, but they don’t appear to have made any meaningful inroads. Whether that’s due to a lack of consumer interest or an inability to deliver green energy at a competitive price, I don’t know.

As for big customers, Amazon Energy Services recently contracted with a merchant producer to generate solar electricity in the Eastern Shore for data centers in Northern Virginia. But Amazon is holding everyone to a non-disclosure agreement, so the terms of the detail are not generally known. Acbar, a frequent contributor to the Bacon’s Rebellion comments section, tells me that many of the documents outlining the terms of the deal are publicly available, but I have not had time to track them down. In any case, I have not risen to a level of competency to decipher the meaning of these hyper-technical documents, and I’m not sure, given all the other issues to write about, that it’s worth the effort.

But the electric power industry is changing fast, and my priorities could change with it.

— JAB

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Posted in Energy, Environment, Infrastructure, Regulations and Government Oversight

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In Defense of Teresa Sullivan

Posted on October 5, 2015 by | 15 comments
Jim Bacon defends Teresa Sullivan? What's next, earthshakes, hurricanes and volcanic eruptions?

Jim Bacon defends Teresa Sullivan. What’s next, earthquakes, hurricanes and volcanic eruptions?

by James A. Bacon

Things have come to a strange pass when I find myself defending University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan. In past posts, I have been highly critical of her performance. But, while I think there are legitimate grounds for criticizing her, some attacks just go too far. A recent case in point is an op-ed published by Del. David I. Ramadan, R-Loudoun, in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

In arguing that it’s time for Sullivan to “go” — presumably to resign — he lays upon her the full responsibility of every sin real and alleged that has been hurled against UVa in the two or three years, from the supposed “epidemic of rape” to ABC agents’ use of excessive force to subdue a black student who’d been drinking near the university grounds.

Perhaps there is rough justice at work here. Citing two documents — an American Association of Universities (AAU) “campus climate” survey and an Office of Civil Rights report on UVa’s response to sexual assaults — Ramadan paints a picture of UVa where one in four women say they they have been sexually assaulted during the past academic year and the university has acted insufficiently to eliminate the “hostile environment” toward women. That’s especially rich because Sullivan, through words and actions, contributed to that perception. In so doing, she helped perpetuate the atmosphere of hysteria that threatens to consume her. But blaming her for failing to address the supposed rape epidemic is manifestly unfair.

Ramadan wrote:

At the University of Virginia [the number of rape, assault or sexual misconduct] was 23.8 percent, with 13.4 percent of undergraduate women saying they had been assaulted during the past academic year alone. In plain English, it means that almost 2,000 daughters — daughters who wanted only a decent education — may have suffered unspeakably.

And also:

The disturbing report issued by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) tells a sickening story of gang rape and multiple accusation against the same accused perpetrators, says the university failed “to eliminate a hostile environment” and, worse still, didn’t act to protect the safety of the broader university community.

Let’s make something clear: The two documents Ramadan cites are highly politicized, created to advance the Obama administration’s “war on women” narrative. A sincere, well-meaning, liberal woman, Sullivan is collateral damage.

Let’s talk first about the AAU survey. The survey was conducted in a wave of orchestrated hype to advance the narrative that an “epidemic of rape” is sweeping through American universities. There is indeed an epidemic of sexual misbehavior, much of it revolving around the excessive use of drugs and alcohol, but the study methodology and conclusions were designed to create the impression that thousands of young women are being subjected to violent rape on campus. There is a problem with rape on campus — and any rape is too many — but the problem is not nearly as severe as portrayed.

The first thing you need to know about the survey is that it was based upon a response rate of 26.4% — one quarter of the student body.  The study never accounts for the possibility that the sample might have been biased by the fact that students (especially women) who had experienced sexual assault were far more likely to participate in order to make their voices felt, or that the highly vocal and well organized anti-rape movement on campus likewise might have spurred like-minded people to take part. I would argue that the highly emotional atmosphere of UVa in the wake of the Rolling Stone gang rape allegations skewed the participation rate. This is confirmed by the fact that the 26.4% response rate at UVa was significantly higher than the 19.3% average response rate for the other 27 institutions of higher education  included in the survey.

Now, let’s dig into the number of self-reported victims of sexual assault. Ramadan correctly quotes the AAU study as saying that 23.8 percent of female undergraduates reportedly experienced some kind of “sexual assault” since entering UVa. But that includes a wide range of offenses.

female_undergrads

The percentage of undergraduate women who described themselves as victims of rape (forced to have sex by physical force or the threat of force) was only 3.0%. Of course, that’s way too many — the only permissible percentage is zero — but it’s a far, far cry from one in eight! The overwhelming majority of these “sexual assaults” constituted unwanted sex that occurred as a result of “incapacitation” — the parties were inebriated — or of unwanted groping. I condemn both, but they are a very different matter than violent rape.

Please note that these numbers refer to undergraduate women. The rate of such incidents for female graduate students is about one-third the rate for undergraduates. The percentage for married graduate females was even lower — pretty close to the incidence for society at large, I would wager. In other words, the epidemic of rape/regret sex/unwanted groping is overwhelmingly an undergraduate phenomenon, not a phenomenon afflicted female students randomly across campus. Why would that be? Could it have something to do with the culture of hook-ups and drunken sex that is much more prevalent among undergrads than graduate students? If that’s the case, it changes the complexion of the problem. Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (higher ed)

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When Dynamic Pricing Meets Energy Storage

Posted on October 2, 2015 by | 69 comments
gathright

Will Gathright

Other states are targeting energy storage as an industry of the future but Virginia may have the most hospitable climate for it.

by James A. Bacon

Will Gathright was living in New York, where he had earned a Ph.D. from Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute, when he got fired up with the idea to use storage batteries to help business customers cut their electric bills. The idea was to buy electricity when it is cheap to charge the batteries, then draw down the batteries during periods of peak demand to offset consumption when electricity is expensive. For the business model to work, he needed to find a location where there was a wide differential in the cost of electricity.

Initially, he figured he might wind up in Hawaii, California or New York, states that are putting a high priority on energy storage. But after conducting a national search to see where his value proposition would fare best, Gathright moved to Northern Virginia.

“Virginia has the winning combination of three factors not present elsewhere in the country,” he explains. First, although Virginia’s peak-demand rates aren’t the highest in the country, they are relatively high. Second, while a few states have cheaper base rates, Virginia’s are significantly lower than the national average. The spread between low base rates and high demand charges creates a bigger potential for savings.

A third factor, Gathright says, is that Virginia electric utilities belong to PJM Interconnection, which manages the electric grid and wholesale markets for 60 million people in the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic region. When his batteries aren’t helping shave a building’s peak demand charge, they can help PJM fine-tune short-term fluctuations in the supply and demand of electricity.

Welcome to the new world of electric load management. Power companies around the country are experimenting with novel rate structures that encourage customers to curtail their electricity consumption during periods of peak demand — typically summer afternoons when air conditioners are running flat-out. One of the most promising strategies for shifting electricity demand is energy storage, usually using batteries, and other states are targeting the sector as a strategic priority. California is requiring its utilities to purchase 1,325 megawatts of energy storage by 2020 and the state of New York state has invested $1.4 million in six battery and energy storage start-ups.

Gathright thinks Virginia may be the most promising location in the country to implement energy storage — not that the idea has gotten much attention here. What Virginia has done is experiment with dynamic pricing: using the price mechanism to encourage customers to shift electric consumption away from periods of peak demand when it is most costly to supply.

The results of Dominion Virginia Power’s dynamic pricing pilot program have been modest so far — positive enough to encourage Dominion to continue the project but not dramatic enough to persuade the company that a revolution in electric consumption is in the offing. But the outlook could change if entrepreneurs like Gathright figure out how to help customers capture the savings that the dynamic-pricing rate structures make possible.

With the encouragement of the State Corporation Commission, Dominion rolled out its dynamic pricing program in 2011, branding it as the Smart Pricing Plan. “The basic premise,” explains SCC spokesman Ken Schrad, “is that if customers are willing to modify behavior and use less electricity during high price periods, they will have the opportunity to save money, and the company in turn will be able to reduce the amount of energy it would otherwise have to generate or purchase during peak periods.”

The pilot was limited to 2,000 customers under a residential tariff and 1,000 small and midsized commercial customers under two commercial tariffs. Participation required having Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) or Interval Data Recorder (IDR) meters that record energy usage every 30 minutes, thus allowing Dominion to measure consumption with greater precision.

Dominion provides customers at least 280 days a year with low-priced electric rates (“C” days), up to 30 days with high rates (“A” days), and the balance with medium rates (“B” days). Dominion communicates the classification to customers the day before to allow them to plan accordingly. Additionally, the company designates up to 25 five-hour blocks, or critical peak events, per year to commercial customers with two-hour notice. The rate differential for the critical peak hours could be literally dozens of times higher than the lowest rates.

For most customers, the jet savings have been minimal. Between October 2013 and October 2014, residential customers saved an average of $48 annually (3% of their electric bills), small commercial customers saved $92 annually (3%). However, larger customers saved $5,900 annually (14%), according to Dominion’s 2015 annual report on the program filed with the SCC. Continue reading →

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Posted in Energy, Environment, Infrastructure, Science & Technology

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Tracking Hurricane Outages Online

Posted on October 1, 2015 by | 5 comments
outage_map

Dominion outage map, 3:00 p.m. Thursday

by James A. Bacon

Last month Dominion Virginia Power rolled out an interactive map that allows the public to report and track power outages and restoration. A nice touch, I thought at the time, but no big deal. That was before Hurricane Joaquin was bearing down on Virginia. All of a sudden, I’m very interested.

According to J.D. Power’s 2014 Electric Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction Study, communications about power outages is an important factor influencing customer satisfaction. Ratings for the industry have improved steadily over the past six years, J.D. Powers said, as companies have taken to communicating outage information via utility-initiated phone calls, emails, text messages and social media sites.

Dominion has gotten the message.

“Next to energy, the most important thing we can provide to customers is information,” said Becky Merritt, vice president of Customer Service in the September press release. “This new outage map provides greater access to the information customers need to help us restore their power quickly in the event of an outage. It also provides information to help manage their lives and reduce the inconvenience.”

New features include:

  • compatibility with most smartphones and tablets;
  • icons indicating the number and general locations of work requests;
  • customized views with street-level or satellite imagery and live weather radar;
  • improved search options, including searching by landmarks or road intersections;
  • faster updates— information refreshes every 15 minutes;
  • option to bookmark multiple outage locations to follow restoration progress; and
  • better tracking of a specific outage through the outage reporting system.

The outage map can be found here.

With an estimated three days before Juaquin arrives, Dominion is bracing itself. Hey, guys, special word of advice: Pay close attention to the Countryside subdivision in Henrico County. It took eleven days for electricity to be restored at the Bacon’s Rebellion global command headquarters after Hurricane Isabel. I’ll be blogging the hurricane — but only if the electricity stays on!

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Posted in Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Energy

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Federal Judge OKs Pipeline Surveys

Posted on October 1, 2015 by | 13 comments

pipelineby James A. Bacon

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by landowners seeking to block the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) from surveying their land for the purpose of building a pipeline.

Three landowners in the path of the proposed 550-mile project had challenged the constitutionality of a state law permitting the pipeline to survey their lands, as long as it abode by certain formalities of notification. After filing the suite, ACP altered the proposed route to bypass the properties of the three plaintiffs.

“The court concludes that the plaintiffs’ facial challenges to the statute fail because the statute does not deprive a landowner of a constitutionally protected property right,” wrote Elizabeth K. Dillon, with the U.S. District Court in Roanoke. Additionally, Dillon ruled, the challenges fail because they are not “ripe,” that is, they are abstract and hypothetical now that ACP has announced that it no longer intends to survey their property. The plaintiffs “face no immediate threat of injury.”

The ruling removes another legal obstacle to surveying and ultimately constructing the pipeline, which its owners, including managing partner Dominion, say will help meet the growing demand for natural gas in Virginia and North Carolina as electric utilities substitute natural gas for coal. In theory the plaintiffs can appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, although it is not clear if they intend to do so.

In an email response, Charlotte Rea, one of the plaintiffs and co-chair of the “All Pain No Gain” group opposing the pipeline, stated the following:

As you might expect, I am disappointed.  I don’t think our forefathers when they wrote the Constitution expected its interpretation to allow for private investor owned corporations to violate the property rights of private citizens.  The Constitution only allows for private property to be taken if it is for proven public need and just compensation is provided the landowner.  Surveys by private corporations on private property should not be allowed.  There has been no determination made that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline project is for the public good.  Until that determination is made, private property owners should not have to cede any property rights.

In a press release, Dominion stated:

From the beginning, we have always believed that the Virginia law is consistent with the U.S. Constitution and allows surveys with proper notification and landowner protections. Yesterday’s ruling affirmed that belief and our actions.

ACP has followed the procedure as laid out in the Virginia law to survey the best route with the least environmental impact. The Virginia law allows survey only as necessary to meet regulatory requirements.

The plaintiff’s attorneys argued that the Takings clause of the Constitution protects property rights, specifically the right to exclude — to forbid others from trespassing. However, wrote Dillon, common law has long recognized that the right to exclude is not absolute. “Courts also have long recognized the common-law privilege to enter private property for survey purposes prior to exercising eminent domain authority.”

Consistent with the common law, Virginia has long permitted governmental entities to conduct surveys on private property before exercising eminent domain authority. For instance, Dillon wrote, the Code of 1819 gave a turnpike company “full power and authority to enter upon all lands and tenements through which they may judge it necessary to make said road.”

Foes have questioned whether the Atlantic Coast Pipeline provides a public purpose, given that it is one of four pipelines proposed to run through Virginia and that pipelines are being built to serve New York and nearby markets, freeing up capacity by the existing Transco mega-pipeline serving Virginia.

However, Dillon wrote:

In the Natural Gas Act, Congress ‘declared that the business of transporting and selling natural gas for ultimate distribution to the public is affected with a public interest.’ …  [The Virginia survey law] allows a natural gas company to gather … information required for the certificate by giving it the ability to enter property and conduct a minimally invasive survey. The statute thus facilitates the ‘transportat[ion] and selling’ of natural gas, and thereby serves a public purpose.”

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Posted in Courts and law, Energy

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