Tag Archives: Atlantic Coast Pipeline

Should Terry McAuliffe Heed This Poll?

Posted on September 21, 2016 by | 13 comments

poll_results

by James A. Bacon

A poll commissioned by the Chesapeake Climate Action Network shows strong public opposition to the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and strong support for tougher restrictions on the disposal of coal ash.

Twenty-eight percent of Virginia voters support Governor Terry McAuliffe’s backing of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Mountain Valley Pipeline while 44% oppose it, found a poll conducted by the Cromer Group in a run-up to a planned picketing of the governor’s office in October.

Meanwhile, 71% of voters polled said McAuliffe should follow the example of other southern states by requiring coal ash to be deposited in lined landfills rather than buried in place near rivers.

“This poll shows that Governor McAuliffe’s cheerleading for fracked-gas pipelines is not only dangerous for communities and the climate, but decidedly unpopular in Virginia,” said Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network in a press release. “The Governor likes to dismiss both the pipelines and coal ash as ‘federal issues’ beyond his influence, but that’s untrue. He has direct executive power to act on behalf of Virginians facing direct harm now. Governor McAuliffe has the means and the moral responsibility to reject the pipelines and to reform coal ash disposal, and his legacy depends on it.”

Bacon’s bottom line: This poll of 732 registered Virginia voters asked two questions. The questions were not laughably slanted, as in some push polls I’ve seen.

(A great example is a American Civil Liberties Union poll sitting on my desk that I actually may respond to, just for yuks. Sample question: “Across the country, we’re seeing efforts to twist the meaning of religious liberty to allow people and businesses to use religion as a license to discriminate and a means to impose their religious beliefs on others. How serious a problem do you think the use of religion to discriminate is in our country today?”)

Though the Cromer Group questions don’t sink to the level of the ACLU’s risible push poll, that’s not to say the phrasing of the questions didn’t nudge respondents toward the desired answers. The first question reads as follows:

Governor McAuliffe supports building two long pipelines that would bring gas from West Virginia into Virginia and send it across the state. He says the pipelines will create jobs, lower bills, help manufacturing, and help the environment. This gas would be extracted through hydraulic fracturing drilling, or fracking. Opponents say these pipelines will allow energy corporations to take hundreds of miles of privately owned land from citizens for private corporate gain. Opponents also say the pipelines will harm Virginia farms, worsen pollution, and damage drinking water and local wells. Weighing the pros and cons, do you support the Governor’s efforts to build these pipelines for fracked gas across Virginia, or not?

The statements within the question are accurate, or at least arguably so. The questions do not contain obviously biased language. They mention reasons to both support and oppose the pipeline. However, the question devotes only 14 words to the “pro” side while giving 41 words to the “con” side. In addition, it refers twice to “fracking” and “fracked gas,” which one could argue are loaded phrases.

Here is the second question:

For decades, Dominion Power has burned coal to create electricity, resulting in an accumulation of millions of tons of coal ash waste near the banks of the Potomac, James, and other rivers. This waste must now be disposed of. Dominion wants to leave its coal ash waste in the ground, covering the top of the ash and not placing protective barriers or linings along the bottom. Dominion says this is safe. North and South Carolina and Georgia have rejected this method as unsafe. They have required the coal ash be moved away from rivers and drinking water into protected, lined landfills. Do you think the Governor should support Dominion’s approach, OR, follow the example of other Southern States to remove the ash to modern landfills?

Again, the statement is accurate and it contains no loaded language. Yet it frames the issue in such a way as to ask the respondent, who likely has no independent knowledge to draw from, to choose between believing Dominion or believing three state governments regarding the best way to dispose of coal ash. The question clearly leads the respondent to group’s preferred answer.

That’s not to say that the question is illegitimate. Virginians should take into consideration the regulatory approaches of other states when pondering how best to regulate coal ash in Virginia. But that is only one way to frame the question. Alternatively, the poll could have focused respondents on the cost of the coal ash disposal. Dominion has estimated the bill could total $3 billion. Environmentalists say it would cost less. I dare say that a question focusing on cost would have yielded different results.

Are those biases in the questions sufficient to skew the findings? Is this a poll that Governor McAuliffe should take seriously? Now that I’ve biased you with my analysis, you tell me. Please respond in the comments section.

Update: Dominion spokesman David Botkins has issued the following statement: “Dominion’s plans for closing coal ash ponds as well as building the ACP protect the environment. To say otherwise is untrue. Over the last many months Dominion has developed plans to close our ponds by consolidating the ash on station property.  EPA endorses that approach. The poll is an obvious effort to use biased questions based on incorrect information to slant the results.”

13 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment

Tagged ,

Atlantic Coast Pipeline Hires Construction Contractor

Posted on September 21, 2016 by | Leave a comment

pipelineA decision by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) regarding the Atlantic Coast Pipeline isn’t expected until next year. But Atlantic Coast Pipeline LLC, a joint venture whose managing partner is Richmond-based Dominion, announced today that it has signed a construction contract with Spring Ridge Constructors International (SRC) to build the 600-mile project.

SRC, a joint venture comprised of four companies with extensive natural gas construction experience, was selected after an extensive competitive bidding process, ACP said.

“The members of SRC are aligned in purpose with the common goals of safe construction practices, a commitment to environmental stewardship and quality construction,” said project director Dam Plume.

The project has aroused furious opposition among environmentalists opposed to the expansion of natural gas-generated electricity and landowners along the route of the pipeline concerned about safety, environmental damage and loss of property values. Foes have contested the public necessity for the pipeline, claiming that a combination of solar, wind, energy efficiency and gas delivered by existing pipelines can meet the energy needs of Virginia and North Carolina.

Showing every outward sign of confidence that it will win regulatory approval, ACP has made significant financial commitments. It has contracted with a Pennsylvania manufacturer to deliver high-quality steel pipe, and now it is contracting with a construction enterprise. In early August, FERC issued a Notice of Schedule, which established a timeline for the remainder of the project’s federal environmental review process. Based on that schedule, ACP expects to receive a FERC certificate in the late summer or fall of 2017, with construction beginning shortly thereafter.

— JAB

Leave a comment

Posted in Energy, Environment

Tagged ,

In Hampton Roads, Life Is Not a Gas

Posted on July 20, 2016 by | 41 comments

natural_gas

Hampton Roads and other Tidewater communities see proposed natural gas pipelines in Virginia as a boon to economic development.

by James A. Bacon

While debate rages in western Virginia over the economic impact of natural gas pipelines on property values and local economies, we hardly hear a peep from the low country areas of Virginia and North Carolina that would benefit from an expanded supply of gas.

Elected officials claim, and economic developers confirm, that inadequate supplies of gas to Hampton Roads and outlying communities prevent them from competing for energy-intensive industrial customers, crimping efforts to grow their economies and create jobs.

“I’ve heard from cities and developers and builders. … We’ve got to get more capacity here,” says Sen. Bill DeSteph, R-Virginia Beach, chair of the Hampton Roads Caucus, who persuaded the region’s 33 state senators and delegates to sign a March letter supporting the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP).

Voices from Hampton Roads and places like Brunswick and Greensville counties, where new gas-fired power plants are being built, have been quiet during the pipeline controversy. The impact of pipeline construction is less tangible and immediate than it is for, say, landowners in the path of the ACP and the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline. And the benefits are more theoretical — fresh gas supplies would put their communities in the running for manufacturing projects they can’t compete for now, but it’s not as if there’s a big job-creating project waiting in the wings. Natural gas proponents aren’t barraging the media with press releases, filing lawsuits or marching on the state capitol.

Still, economic developers and political leaders have quietly lined up behind pipeline development, especially the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. For DeSteph, the aha! moment occurred about two-and-a-half years ago when demand from a severe cold snap swamped the local gas distributor, Virginia National Gas. The utility had to tell some of its largest customers to curtail their use of the fuel, as called for under contract. “I was shocked that we shut down the gas supply,” says DeSteph. “In my opinion that’s something we should never do.”

While big industrial customers usually can manage such outages, supply curtailments send a signal that gas supplies are limited. No energy-intensive manufacturer would want to locate or expand in Hampton Roads when they could locate worry-free in other communities. Noting that the Norfolk Naval Station was one of the entities that curtailed its gas use, DeSteph even fears that the capped gas supply could undermine the region’s status as a military hub.

The decline in natural gas prices made possible by fracking and the exploitation of the Marcellus/Utica gas fields has driven the re-shoring of energy-intensive manufacturing back to the United States, says Rick Weddle, president of the Hampton Roads Economic Development Partnership. But the areas benefiting from the trend have been those with access to the abundant gas supplies. Hampton Roads isn’t in the running.

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline, designed to carry 1.5 billion cubic feet of gas per day, could change that. The pipeline would run from West Virginia through Virginia to North Carolina. A spur would split off from the main pipeline to deliver gas to Virginia Natural Gas, which has signed a 20-year customer agreement, and whose parent company AGL Resources is one of the partners in the project. The pipeline also would serve Piedmont Natural Gas serving the North Carolina market, which is a partner, too. (Dominion Resources, a sponsor of this blog, is the managing partner.)

A bigger supply of natural gas to the region would expand the prospects that Hampton Roads could compete for. “We would target new industries,” Weddle says.

The same logic applies to smaller communities in eastern Virginia and North Carolina, which also sit at the end of the existing pipeline distribution system.

The big five utilities in the industrial recruitment game are wastewater, electricity, fiber-optic cable and natural gas, says Christopher Chung, CEO of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina. “Most companies want gas, whether they’re using it for heating or as part of the manufacturing process. Not one hundred percent need it, but most do. It’s really hard for a community to make the case to recruit a manufacturer if it doesn’t have natural gas. Not impossible. But so many locations do have it that you’re at a major competitive disadvantage if you don’t.” Continue reading →

41 Comments

Posted in Economic development, Energy, Infrastructure

Tagged , ,

Activists Pressure McAuliffe on Environmental Agenda

Posted on June 16, 2016 by | 12 comments

gas_pipelineby James A. Bacon

Governor Terry McAuliffe is getting heat from his far left flank for endorsing the construction of natural gas pipelines in Virginia, supporting offshore drilling and supporting Dominion Virginia Power’s plans for disposing of coal ash. While crediting McAuliffe for “small steps” in supporting solar power, energy efficiency and coastline resiliency in the face of rising sea levels, a coalition of mostly left-leaning environmentalists is calling for stronger measures.

“On the biggest, most polluting issues of our time, the Governor simply has not shown he has heard the voices of affected communities or joined the growing statewide call for justice,” states an open letter signed by more than sixty environmental, social justice and property rights groups.

Notably absent from the signatories were mainstream environmental organizations such as the Southern Environmental Law Center, the Sierra Club and the National Resources Defense Council. The mainstream groups support the same positions but have worked within the system by lobbying, filing lawsuits and participating in gubernatorial stakeholder groups. 

The McAuliffe administration responded forcefully with a defense of the governor’s record on clean energy, solar power, water quality and preparing for climate change. “The governor recognizes that clean energy is the lifeblood of the new Virginia economy, and a majority of Virginians support his work to create jobs while protecting the natural resources that are so important to the commonwealth’s quality of life,” spokesman Christina Nuckols told the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Arrayed against the environmental and social justice activists are a coalition of manufacturers, chambers of commerce, labor unions and economic development groups that support the pipeline. These groups have been far less active and less visible.

Specifically, the open letter calls for McAuliffe to:

  • Discontinue his support of offshore drilling.
  • Reconsider his support for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and Mountain Valley Pipeline, and use his legal authority to review and challenge water permits under the Clean Water Act.
  • Immediately stop the plans of Dominion Virginia Power and other companies to “dump millions of additional tons of toxic coal ash liquid” into Virginia rivers or to otherwise improperly store the ash.
  • Support strong policy solutions to combat coastal flooding while capping carbon pollution.
  • Commit to a “mass-based” plan under the Clean Power Plan that would set stricter limits on CO2 emissions from electric power plants and “create thousands of new renewable energy jobs.”

Casting itself as a “multi-generational, multi-racial, multi-regional” movement for social change, the group is organizing a “march on the mansion” in Richmond on July 23.

Bacon’s bottom line: As a moderate Democrat, McAuliffe walks a fine line between his number one priority, creating jobs, and supporting environmentalists’ goals. While the mainstream environmental groups push their agenda from the inside — former SELC attorney Angela Navarro now works as Deputy Secretary of Natural Resources, for instance — the activist groups are pushing from the outside.

McAuliffe has supported the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan to curtail CO2 emissions, implicated in global warming, but he has not yet committed to any of the four broad options available to states for meeting the federal goals. The “mass-based” plan favored by environmentalists, critics argue, would cost ratepayers billions of dollars.

The governor also has supported the pipeline projects, arguing that greater use of natural gas would allow Virginia to transition away from coal, reduce CO2 emissions, and compete for industry that uses natural gas as a feedstock or energy source. The pipelines have stirred up a hornet’s nest of opposition among Virginia mountain communities along the route, where people fear, among other things, that construction and operation of the pipelines will cause erosion that releases sediment into streams, rivers and water supplies. They argue that the regulatory apparatus, divided between the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and DEQ, is broken. In particular, they fear that DEQ is being constrained by pressure from the governor’s office to not move more aggressively to regulate the impact of the pipelines upon water quality.

The coal ash issue has been contentious, too. While DEQ has issued Dominion permits for treating and disposing of the water in coal ash ponds, it has not yet issued permits for disposing of the mineral residue itself. Environmentalists want to put the material into lined landfills to prevent any possibility of groundwater contamination. Dominion says that option could cost $3 billion, which would be passed on to rate payers. The McAuliffe administration has not indicated which way it leans.

12 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment

Tagged , ,

Swapping Easements

Posted on May 27, 2016 by | 7 comments
This Dominion map submitted to the VOF shows the location of conservation easements in the Augusta-Bath-Highland area (parcels outlined in red), and the location of the Hayfield Farm where Dominion would create an easement and turn over to the VOF. (Click for larger image.)

This Dominion map submitted to the VOF shows the location of conservation easements in the Augusta-Bath-Highland area (parcels outlined in red), and the location of the Hayfield Farm where Dominion would create an easement and turn over to the VOF. (Click for larger image.)

by James A. Bacon

Dominion Transmission, managing partner of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, has proposed to donate two parcels totaling nearly 1,200 acres to offset the intrusion of its proposed 600-mile pipeline onto lands protected by conservation easements.

In a proposal made to the Virginia Outdoor Foundation (VOF), which holds the conservation easements, Dominion would donate the land and easements for a 1,100-acre parcel and and 85-acre parcel to offset the conversion of 68 acres of protected open space on ten different easement-protected parcels in Bath, Highland and Nelson Counties. The donations would create a “mitigation ratio” of 16 to 1 in one case and 20 to in the other, according to Robert Hare, senior business development manager with Dominion.

Dominion presented its proposals Thursday to VOF’s Energy & Infrastructure Committee. The Mountain Valley Pipeline, which proposes to build an interstate transmission line through Virginia, also described a plan to offset an easement in Montgomery County that it wants to route its pipeline through. The ACP proposals are expected to be reviewed by the full VOF board next month.

The stakes are potentially momentous for the governance of conservation easements in Virginia. In its entire 50-year history, VOF has received only 14 “conversion-diversion” requests to alter easements, which landowners grant in order to protect scenic, environmental, cultural or historical resources on their property in perpetuity. Most conversions involved slivers of land needed for public purposes such as widening a road, adding a turning lane for a school or extending water-sewer lines. In every case, the requests were supported by the local governments involved. The pipeline cases are very different. They are proposed by for-profit utilities, they would be far more intrusive, and they are all opposed by the respective local governments.

Conservation easements are protected by state law, and they are hard to bust using eminent domain under state law. But Dominion’s interstate pipeline is regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). In the event of a conflict, it is unknown whether federal or state law would prevail because no case has been tested in the courts.

VOF board members find themselves between a rock and a hard place, said Tom Slater, chairman of the energy and infrastructure committee. A Richmond attorney, he spends weekends tending to 110 Angus cows on a Loudoun County farm that his family has owned since the 1840s. Board members are passionate about conservation and sympathetic to landowners who entrusted their easements to the VOF, he said. “We want to enforce state law.” At the same time, he added, they are cognizant that state law could be “pre-empted” by federal law.

Under FERC guidelines, pipeline companies must go through an exhaustive process of working with state agencies to avoid or mitigate intrusions upon historical, cultural and environmental resources. Virginia is unique in having an entity like the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, which holds 3,835 easements totaling more than 750,000 acres. While VOF’s mission is to conserve viewsheds, wildlife habitat and other resources, it is also enjoined by state law to work with railroads, utilities, the Virginia Department of Transportation and other entities citing a public-need justification for infringing on the easements.

Dominion has made literally hundreds of adjustments to its proposed route. The resulting zigs and zags around residential areas and land with historical, cultural or environmental value have increased the pipeline length from an estimated 550 miles to 600 miles.

An early version of the route had managed to avoid 23 VOF easements, Hare told the VOF committee. However, when the U.S. Forest Service wrote a letter to FERC in January stating that the pipeline would be “incompatible” with the protection of rare salamanders and other species in Virginia and West Virginia national forests, Dominion had to re-route 95 miles of the line. With severely constrained options, the new route ran through 10 VOF-protected parcels.

The Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) hasn’t faced the same routing challenges as ACP, but it still found itself unable to avoid one easement. The company has asked the VOF if it could mitigate the impact of crossing that parcel, as well as allowing a temporary construction-access road, by purchasing land elsewhere and turning over the easement to VOF. In the meantime, MVP is working on a work-around that may allow it to withdraw its request, said Lindsey Hesch, senior environmental specialist.

Dominion and MVP have shown “good faith” in trying to route their pipelines around conservation easements, said Slater, the committee chair. “But these land swaps are a first — on a scale way beyond anything we’ve experienced before.” Continue reading →

7 Comments

Posted in Environment, Infrastructure

Tagged , ,

Justifiable Jitters or Unwarranted Worry?

Posted on May 26, 2016 by | 25 comments
Leslie Hartz, the Dominion executive in charge of pipeline construction shows the width of steel to be used in smaller-diameter sections of pipe.

Leslie Hartz, the Dominion executive in charge of pipeline construction, shows the width of steel to be used in smaller-diameter sections of pipe.

Virginians living in the path of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline fret about the threat of explosions. Dominion Transmission says their fears are overblown.

by James A. Bacon

Irene Leech, a consumer studies professor at Virginia Tech, grew up on a farm in Buckingham County where her family has raised beef for more than a hundred years. The family has preserved many of the original structures, including the old ice house, granary and smokehouse. Her husband, she says, devotes half his time to help keep the farm going. “Our plan is to retire to the farmhouse. Our goal is to pass on a sustainable business to the next generation.”

But Dominion Transmission, managing partner of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, has thrown her for a loop. The company wants to route a high-pressure transmission pipeline through the farm. While Leech acknowledges that the odds of gas leaking and igniting anywhere near her are remote, if the gas does explode, the farmhouse and outbuildings are within the danger zone.

“From my perspective, they put my life at risk, all our property, all our heritage,” says Leech. “I know the odds of something happening are very, very small. But I had a brother killed in a farm accident. My grandmother died in an accident. My husband was working for the Pentagon on 9/11. I was at Virginia Tech during the mass shooting. Things happen. We’ll have to live with the risk for the rest of time.”

Leech is just one of thousands of residents along the route of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) who worry about the safety risks. Like many others, she remains unpersuaded by Dominion assurances that the ACP will incorporate the latest, greatest technology, best practices, and specifications that exceed federal safety standards. Running pipe on the steep slopes and through sinkhole-ridden karst geology of the mountainous Nelson and Augusta counties poses issues that pipelines don’t encounter in less rugged terrain.

“The possibility of an explosion is the really frightening thing,” she says. “You can come up with statistics that make it seem very remote. The problem is, if it occurs, it’s really deadly.”

Dominion responds that it is pushing the envelope of industry best practices to ensure the safe operation of the pipeline, which, if approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), would run from West Virginia through Virginia to North Carolina. “We’re a safety first company,” says Dominion Transmission spokesman Aaron Ruby. That’s not a P.R. slogan, he insists. An emphasis on safety permeates the organizational culture and informs everything the company does.

Dominion makes every reasonable effort to accommodate landowners like Leech, says Ruby. The company has offered to re-route the pipeline from an 800-foot distance from her farmhouse to 1,900 feet, he says, “but she has refused to let us survey her property to see if the alternative is suitable.”

In the meantime, the company is designing safety into pipeline construction and operations at every step, says Leslie Hartz, vice president of pipeline construction. The quality-control process entails a rigorous inspection protocol for fabricating the pipe in the mill, and then X-ray and hydrostatic testing of pipes and welding in the field. When up and running, ACP will use robots to inspect the pipe interior and will deploy aerial patrols and sensors to monitor the exterior. If conditions deviate from narrowly defined parameters, operators will not hesitate to shut down the pipeline.

Pipelines co-exist with people all around the country, and hardly anyone thinks about it, says Ruby. As an example in Virginia, he cites Lake Monticello, a bedroom community in the Charlottesville metropolitan region with a 2010 population of almost 10,000. “Lake Monticello …. developed over many decades alongside four large-diameter natural gas pipelines!”

The Big Picture

Interstate gas pipelines are the safest mode of energy transportation, says Catherine Landry, a spokesperson for the Interstate Natural Gas Alliance of America (INGAA). “Last year 99.999997% of gas moved without incident.” That compares very favorably to moving propane or petroleum by truck or rail. Continue reading →

25 Comments

Posted in Energy, Infrastructure, Public safety & health

Tagged , ,

Pipelines Don’t Hurt Home Values, Study Says

Posted on March 2, 2016 by | 16 comments

pipeline_impactA month after foes of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline issued an economic study showing that the natural gas pipeline would diminish property values along the proposed 550-mile route by $141 million, Dominion Energy has fired back by citing a study claiming that gas pipelines have no impact on residential property values at all.

Analyzing property values in communities in Ohio, New Jersey, Virginia, Mississippi, and Pennsylvania, the report determined that “there is no measurable impact on the sales price of properties located along or in proximity to a natural gas pipeline versus properties which are not located along or in proximity to the same pipeline.”

“These findings might help property owners feel more confident about natural gas pipelines proposed in their communities,” said Don Santa, CEO of the INGAA Foundation in a press release. The foundation is associated with the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America. The bulk of the analysis was conducted by Integra Realty Resources.

The study identified residential neighborhoods that were bordered or bisected by at least one pipeline and compared 200 home sales of similar properties both on and off the pipelines. Study areas included suburban communities outside Cincinnati, Ohio, a rural neighborhood in Clinton, N.J., a master-planned residential community in Prince William County, Va., a suburb outside Jackson, Miss., and a small town subdivision in Dallastown, Pa. Houses were “normalized” by adjusting for gross living area, size, age and other factors.

The INGAA study employed a methodology that compared actual home sales. By contrast, the Key-Log Economics study underwritten by pipeline foes calculated the loss of what it called “ecosystem service values,” which incorporated such intangibles as the loss of viewsheds, air quality and protection from extreme events. Key-Log obtained its per-acre values primarily from a database of more than 1,300 estimates compiled as part of a global study known as “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity.”

Your assignment: compare and contrast the merits of the two reports.

Pipeline Impact to Property Value and Property Insurability, INGAA Foundation

Economic Costs of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, Key-Log Economics

— JAB

16 Comments

Posted in Energy, Property rights

Tagged ,

Gas Worse Carbon Polluter than Coal, Says Sierra Club

Posted on February 1, 2016 by | 21 comments

global_warmingby James A. Bacon

The Sierra Club has attacked the idea of natural gas as a “clean fuel” in a new broadside against the proposed construction of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) and the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) through Virginia. When viewed over the “natural gas fuel cycle” — including production, transportation and combustion — natural gas would be a bigger contributor to climate change than the existing electric generating fleet, including coal-fired plants, the environmental organization charged late last week.

“Natural gas only seems like a cheap and easy fix for climate change,” said Glen Besa, director of the Sierra Club Virginia Chapter, in a statement accompanying the white paper. “In reality, methane pollution is a serious problem that makes natural gas a dead-end solution. We have to stop kidding ourselves. Virginia should be investing in wind and solar and energy efficiency, not expanding infrastructure for more fossil fuel burning.”

The Sierra Club issued the report as the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality makes important decisions about how the state should implement the federally imposed Clean Power Plan, which calls for a massive reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions from Virginia power plants by 2030. The Sierra Club and other environmental groups have called for the most aggressive options, which would require more solar and wind and less natural gas than proposed by Dominion Virginia Power. Backers of the ACP and MVP pipelines have justified the projects on the grounds that they will supply gas-fired power plants in Virginia and North Carolina with cheap shale gas from West Virginia and Ohio.

“The overwhelming consensus of state and federal policymakers – which the Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club ignores – is the increased use of natural gas for electric generation is essential to meeting the Clean Power Plan,” responded Jim Norvelle, director-media relations for Dominion Energy, the managing partner of the ACP.

“This is the view of President Obama and elected officials from states across the country,” he said. “It is also the clear guidance of the [Environmental Protection Agency], which identified increased use of natural gas generation as one of three key building blocks for meeting the goals of the Clean Power Plan.”

Because the combustion of natural gas releases less CO2 per unit of heat than the combustion of coal, it is commonly argued that a switch to gas, while less helpful than a shift to solar and wind in reducing CO2, does make a significant contribution as a “bridge” fuel in the fight against global warming. But the Sierra Club argues that such a combustion-only analysis excludes the impact of the release of gas during fracking operations and pipeline leaks. Summarizes the Sierra Club statement:

In addition to emitting large amounts of CO2 when burned, natural gas is a major contributor to climate change in the extraction and transmission stages, where significant amounts of methane escape from wells and pipeline leaks. Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, and these “fugitive emissions” of methane have emerged as an area of serious concern that undercuts the case for natural gas as a cleaner substitute for coal. …

Greenhouse gas emissions for Atlantic Coast Pipeline would be more than five times the annual emissions from Dominion’s Chesterfield Power Station, the largest coal fired plant in Virginia, and equal to more than 80% of the total carbon pollution from all 177 stationary sources in the EPA’s 2014 inventory of GHG emissions in Virginia, states the Sierra Club.  The impact of the Mountain Valley Pipeline would be even greater.

Critics of renewable fuels counter that solar and wind farms produce electricity only  when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, not when there is a demand for electricity. Natural gas generation can be dialed up and down quickly as electricity demand changes. That flexibility is particularly critical if electric utilities are to adopt “demand-response” rate structures that encourage users to conserve energy during periods of peak demand. Gas advocates also note that the gas infrastructure has less impact on the landscape. Solar and wind requires far more land to generate comparable amounts of electricity; wind turbines and vast expanses of solar panels also are more visually intrusive than buried pipelines.

21 Comments

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

Tagged , , , ,

Putting a Price on the Priceless

Posted on January 25, 2016 by | 9 comments
jamestown_dig

Jamestown archaeological dig site. Photo credit: Daily Press

How does the state put a dollar value on historic, cultural and environmental assets threatened by eminent domain?

by James A. Bacon

In its high-stakes effort to win regulatory approval to build a 500 kV electric transmission line to the Virginia Peninsula, Dominion Virginia Power proposed in December to spend $85 million to mitigate the project’s impact on historical and environmental resources. That’s over and above the estimated $155 million cost to build the 7.7-mile line, which Dominion says is critical to maintain a reliable electric supply to nearly 500,000 residents from Williamsburg to Hampton.

Measures in the draft Memorandum of Agreement submitted to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would do nothing to alter the visual intrusion of the 17 towers crossing the James River near Jamestown. But it would allocate $52.7 million to underwrite archaeological work and other improvements in and around Jamestown Island, $15.6 million for water quality improvements, $12.5 million for landscape and battlefield conservation, and $4.2 million to acquire wetlands, restore shorelines and preserve historical resources nearby.

Dominion’s proposal is being circulated for feedback, and there is no guarantee that it will be accepted by the Army Corps, which  is charged with considering the adverse impact of the project on wetlands and historic assets. In the view of some conservationists, nothing can make up for the cluttering of view sheds in and around Jamestown, one of the most important historical sites in American history.

Whatever the Army Corps decides, the MOA still represents a watershed in Virginia regulation. It would be one of the largest sums, perhaps the largest sum, ever proposed to offset the impact of a Virginia utility project on environmental, historic or cultural resources.

“We’ve not conducted an exhaustive file search, but [I] suspect that few final mitigation proposals to resolve adverse effects to historic resources associated with a Corps permit have exceeded a total cost of $85 million,” says Mark W. Haviland, chief of public affairs for the Army Corp’s Norfolk office.

Few spots resonate in the Virginia psyche like Jamestown does, but the state is chockablock with historical sites, cultural sites, landscapes, wildlife habitats and view sheds that many would like to preserve from development. As Bacon’s Rebellion documented recently (see “Clash of Competing Values“), these intangible resources have become so ubiquitous that it is increasingly difficult for energy companies to build gas pipelines or electric transmission lines without crossing multiple assets.

Decades ago, routing pipelines and transmission lines wasn’t the complex task that it is today. It was a relatively straightforward exercise to calculate the fair-market value of farmland, timberland and houses to compensate landowners for lost economic value. But the determinants of economic value for land have evolved. Increasingly, Virginians in rural areas purchase property for the views they offer or the natural habitat they conserve, not for their ability to extract income. Moreover, various public and private entities are identifying habitats and view sheds as worth protecting — historical sites and districts; federal, state and local parks; scenic highways and scenic rivers; private conservation easements and public conservation zones;  and wetlands, wildlife habitat and more.

Can a price tag be put on an acre of habitat for the rare Cow Knob Salamander? How much is it worth to preserve the view from James Madison’s library window at Montpelier? What is the value of an obscure Civil War battlefield such as the indecisive 1864 cavalry clash at Samaria Church in Charles City County?

Much of the conflict between utilities and conservationists stems from regulators’ inability to value intangible assets that loom large in nearly every project, thus making it impractical for utilities to pay meaningful compensation. Dominion’s proposal is significant because it attempts to offset the adverse visual impact on Jamestown-area historical resources by funding the creation of non-visual benefits.

Both utility executives and their foes acknowledge the trade-offs between economic growth, jobs and profits on the one hand and hard-to-value historical, cultural and environmental assets. The great public policy question is what weight should be given to one and what weight to the other.

For years Virginia was a “a manufacturing powerhouse,” says Margaret Fowler, co-founder of the Save the James Alliance and one of the more outspoken foes of the Surry-Skiffes Creek transmission line project. “We were undeveloped, we needed power, we needed factories. Industrialization happened. At some point … we became sensitive to what we were losing — air quality, water quality, visual beauty. Has the pendulum swung too far? I don’t think so. But I understand the dilemma.” Continue reading →

9 Comments

Posted in Environment, Land use & Development, Property rights, Regulations and Government Oversight

Tagged , ,

Clash of Competing Values

Posted on January 20, 2016 by | 44 comments
chickahominy_route

Map 1: Subdivisions and recreation areas. Proposed Chickahominy-Skiffes Creek transmission line route. (Click for image.)

Virginians need pipelines and transmission lines to keep the economy humming. But we also value our historical, cultural and historical heritage. The trade-offs are getting harder and harder.

by James A. Bacon

In the 1970s engineers at Dominion Virginia Power envisioned the need to increase the supply of electric power to the Virginia Peninsula one day. The logical course of action at the time seemed to be hooking into a 500 kV substation north of the James River in Charles City County, skirting Williamsburg, and plugging into a York County switching station where the power could be stepped down to lower voltages. To secure the route, the company proactively procured easements the entire length. It seemed an example of far-sighted planning.

When the Environmental Protection Agency enacted new toxic-emission standards earlier this decade that would compel Dominion to shut down its Yorktown coal-fired power plants, the company dusted off plans to import electricity from outside the Peninsula. However, taking a close look at the route, Courtney Fisher, an electric transmission siting and permitting specialist, found that many things had changed since the 1970s. Developers had built subdivisions right up to the easement. Environmental laws had became stricter, creating protections for wetlands and waterways. Government agencies had created classes of protected land, such as parks, conservation districts and agricultural/forestal districts. Private landowners had set up conservation easements. Society as a whole placed greater value upon scenic vistas and cultural resources like churches, battlefields, cemeteries and Indian settlements.

Even though Dominion owned the right of way, it didn’t take many public hearings to realize that building a high-voltage transmission line along that route would be a public relations disaster. The 38-mile line would cross 28 subdivisions and 300 parcels, leaving 1,129 residences within 500 feet of the line.

“The easement was purchased but the land was never cleared,” Fisher said. “Through the years, people bought houses. Their plats should have showed the easements. Some showed our transmission line easements and some did not. In either case, a line on a piece of paper is very different from the reality.”

Making matters worse, the transmission line would cut through 21 miles of forest land, requiring the clearing of 420 acres of trees, and it would affect 253 acres of wetland and forested wetlands. A crossing over the Chickahominy River would disrupt views to one of the most pristine stretches of river in eastern Virginia. To top it all off, the Chickahominy Indian tribe expressed concerns about the proximity of the line to its lands.

The route would have been so disruptive that Dominion decided to push an alternative, the 7.4-mile Surry-Skiffes Creek route across a historic stretch of the James River, arousing the wrath of conservationists and preservationists in the Williamsburg area and around the state.  As controversial as that proposed route has proven to be, Dominion believes the Chickahominy route would have been worse.

When it comes to picking a route, sometimes there are only painful choices, says Fisher. “We know we can’t please everyone, but we strive to minimize overall impacts.”

As the United States adapts to a post-coal era of more solar, wind and natural gas, major energy corporations are actively seeking to acquire right of way for two major gas pipelines and build several electric transmission lines in Virginia, with more projects waiting in the wings. The problem is that more places on the map are designated off-limits than ever before.

Route of the Williams Companies' Transco pipeline, built around 1950.

Route of the Williams Companies’ Transco pipeline, built circa 1950.

Building gas and electric lines was a lot easier a half century ago when projects disturbed little more than farm and woodlands. Witness the Transco pipeline built through Virginia around 1950 in a straight line. For purposes of acquiring right of way, it was a straightforward proposition to calculate the loss of economic value to a farm or a timber stand to compensate a landowner for an easement across his land.

Since then, suburban sprawl has smeared low-density subdivisions across vast swaths of the landscape, while changing societal values have placed a priority on preserving Virginia’s cultural, historical and environmental resources. Try assigning an economic value to a family cemetery, an expanse of marsh grass or the bucolic view from a vineyard.

Gas and electric companies follow a standard procedure when plotting routes for pipelines and transmission lines. The preliminary step is to plot the most economical path from Point A to Point B, using detailed maps identifying terrain features as well as environmental, historical and cultural assets in the path. Within the budget constraints of the project, they are willing to zig and zag to avoid sensitive locations. If it is impractical to steer around a subdivision, wetlands or scenic vista, utility companies endeavor to minimize the impact — whether drilling through mountains, in the case of pipelines, employing low-glare materials to build a transmission line, or utilizing any number of other strategies. Then begins the open houses and meetings with affected landowners, federal and state agencies and other interested parties to refine the proposed routes further.

A particularly thorny set of issues revolves around how much money utilities should spend in order to avoid or mitigate these conflicts. If a pipeline or transmission line diminishes viewsheds and destroys economic value, how much of that cost should be shifted to rate payers and how much should be absorbed by the property owner? And what happens if a historic, cultural or environmental asset is priceless? Bacon’s Rebellion will explore those issues in an upcoming article.

However those issues are decided, Virginia will be seeing more of these conflicts. To show how challenging it can be to plot a route, Bacon’s Rebellion sat down with Fisher to discuss the challenges posed by the Chickahominy-Skiffes Creek route and with Robert M. Bisha, director-environmental business for Dominion Resources, to walk through the major choke points in the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline. Continue reading →

44 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment, Property rights, Regulations and Government Oversight

Tagged , ,

Putting Easements to the Test

Posted on November 6, 2015 by | 14 comments

As gas and electric companies propose dozens of pipeline and transmission-line projects in Virginia, landowners are finding their conservation easements don’t provide as much protection as they thought.

Elizabeth Terry Reynolds (left) and her sister Grace Terry show a map of family land in Roanoke County. The current iteration of the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline route would cut through family land, and a construction access road would run through land held in a conservation easement (seen in blue).

Elizabeth Terry Reynolds (left) and Grace Terry show a map of family land in Roanoke County. The current iteration of the route for the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline would run through family property, and a construction access road would cut through land held in a conservation easement (seen in blue). The sisters traveled to Warrenton yesterday to speak before a subcommittee of the Virginia Outdoor Foundation.

by James A. Bacon

As a surge of proposals for gas pipelines and electric transmission lines in Virginia works through the regulatory process, a backlash by grantors of conservation easements is brewing. In letters and in public hearings, landowners are openly questioning whether conservation easements provide the protections they were thought to provide, and some are pressuring the Virginia Outdoors Foundation (VOF), which holds most of the easements, to work more aggressively to safeguard them, even to the extent of getting more actively involved in cases before the State Corporation Commission (SCC).

“The process we’ve used for the past 100 years in Virginia is no longer working,” said Chris Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC), at a VOF committee hearing yesterday in Warrenton. The PEC’s membership includes dozens if not hundreds of conservation easement grantors.

In Virginia, the SCC approves electric transmission line routes, Miller said. The SCC uses an “adversarial” process, in which power companies, environmental groups and other interests present their evidence and their arguments. Rather than conducting its own investigations, the SCC relies upon the material that is submitted. Typically, VOF has not taken sides in these hearings. Given the increasing collision of interests, Miller said, “There is distrust now in the landowner community whether the VOF has the capacity to protect their values.”

The VOF, a publicly funded entity, promotes the preservation of open-space lands and administers roughly 4,000 easements covering more than 750,000 acres of land, an area about the size of the state of Rhode Island. The foundation recently created an Energy and Infrastructure Committee to address the incursion of big infrastructure projects on land protected by easements.

Brett Glymph, VOF executive director, said she will take Miller’s proposal under advisement, consult with legal counsel, and make a recommendation to the full board of directors. Unless a special meeting is called, the earliest the board could take up the issue would be in March, she said.

Conflicts between utilities and landowners have sharpened as the number of easements and energy projects have increased in recent years. Successive Virginia governors have made it a priority to bolster the amount of scenic, historic and environmentally valuable land either owned by the public or protected by conservation easements. As an incentive, state law allows landowners to claim up to $75 million in state tax credits each year for land grants and easements. The result has been a dramatic increase in the acreage of protected land in Virginia over the past decade.

At the same time, a transformation of the energy economy has put Virginia in the path of major energy projects. The development of the Marcellus shale fields in West Virginia and Ohio has created a boom in natural gas production. There are four active proposals to build or upgrade gas pipelines through the state to serve growing markets in Virginia and North Carolina. Meanwhile, electric utilities, compelled by Environmental Protection Agency rules to reduce pollution and carbon-dioxide emissions, are closing coal-fired power plants, building gas-fired plants and swapping more electricity between each other, all of which requires the rerouting of electricity flows and the construction of new transmission lines.

Four energy companies — Dominion Virginia Power, Appalachian Power, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, and the Mountain Valley Pipeline — briefed the VOF committee about their individual projects. None of their representatives addressed Miller’s comments, but they did describe the challenges of devising routes for pipelines and transmission lines while also trying to protect wildlife habitat, rivers and streams, historic areas, cultural artifacts, view sheds and conservation easements. Routing pipelines, said Brian Wilson with the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, is “very much an exercise in competing constraints.”

SCC spokesman Ken Schrad responded in an interview today that “any interested party” can participate in an SCC transmission-line proceeding. The commission is required by law to weigh the environmental impact of a project along with its effect on rate payers and electric-system reliability. Staff members do some research, but because staffers are not environmental experts, the commission also hires consultants. Further, Schrad said, the SCC works with the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to solicit input from a myriad of state agencies, including the VOF, about environmental impacts.

“The commission certainly gets environmental testimony,” Schrad said. “A conservation easement would have to be taken into consideration in an environmental review.” Continue reading →

14 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment, Regulations and Government Oversight

Tagged ,

“Cultural Attachment” the Latest Barrier to Infrastructure Projects?

Posted on October 27, 2015 by | 11 comments
country_road

Take me home, country roads…

by James A. Bacon

Landowner and environmentalist groups have advanced a number of arguments against building more gas pipelines (see previous post), but among the more novel is the idea that the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) will disrupt the “cultural attachment” rural landowners feel for the land that would be traversed. What foes are contending here is that construction of a pipeline will do far more than hurt property values. It will damage peoples’ culture in ways that cannot be mitigated.

Most arguments against the Virginia pipelines are familiar in the sense that they appeal to widely (if not universally) recognized principles of economics and environmental stewardship. The “cultural attachment”gambit  is not like anything I have seen before.

Here’s how a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from some 30 environmental and landowner groups makes the case:

The proposed route of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline will cross primarily rural landscapes where agriculture and forestry are the dominant land uses. The communities that would be affected by the ACP have deep roots in and strong cultural identification with the land and its rural character. In addition to adverse effects associated with the use of eminent domain, construction and right-of-way maintenance … the ACP will have significant adverse effects on the character of these currently non-industrialized areas.

The adverse effects of the taking and alteration of private property … must be assessed in light of the affected communities’ “cultural attachment” to the land. Cultural attachment is the “cumulative effect over time of a collection of traditions, attitudes, practices, and stories that ties a person to the land, to physical place, and kinship patterns.” Much of the land that would be affected by the ACP has been held in families for generations and people’s reliance on the land for survival and prosperity has resulted in high levels of cultural attachment. Rural Appalachian communities have historically suffered from significant intrusions, such as railroad highway constructions, that have “undercut the cultural patterns that had developed through people’s relation to the land, physical place, and kin.

As the U.S. Forest Service recognized in a 1996 Draft Environmental Impact Statement for an Appalachian Power Co. project in rural West Virginia and Virginia:

Substantial outside-generated intrusions (such as highways, railroads, and transmission lines) that breach the boundary of a high cultural attachment area may have significant adverse impacts to the sustainability of the local culture. … The permanence of the intrusions is a symbol of the imposed dominance of commerce and economic interests. … Permanent and elongate linear intrusions tend to bifurcate previously existing cultural units into new units. This tends to fracture informal support systems and create new boundary areas. Boundary areas created by intrusion are often abandoned by area residents from cultural management, thereby increasing the likelihood of additional intrusions.

Bacon’s bottom line: It strikes me that this argument is getting at something real. Some people feel an attachment to the land so strong that it transcends the monetary value of the land. Disruption to these ties cannot be measured by any conventional means, thus they cannot be compensated.

If the Virginia Department of Transportation wanted to run a highway through my home in western Henrico where I have lived for 13 years, I would be plenty unhappy. But I wouldn’t be devastated. My personal identity is not tied up in the house. I have no ancestral ties here, no spiritual ties. Leaving the house would have no impact on my network of kin and friends. I fully expect to sell the house when I retire and I’m ready to downsize. The house is a commodity in a way that property is not for people with strong attachments to the land.

I sympathize with those who fear the loss of something that can never be retrieved. But I have concerns. The idea of “cultural attachment” is so vague and hard to define that it could be applied to almost anything. There is no way to measure cultural attachment, and there is no way to ascertain the sincerity of the people who claim to have it. If this new doctrine were given legal force, it could be invoked to block any infrastructure project that ran through a rural area, that is to say, almost every road, highway, rail line, transmission line or pipeline ever proposed.

The idea has been around at least 20 years (since the 1996 U.S. Forest Service report at least). It doesn’t appear to have gained much traction since then. It will be interesting to see if FERC gives it any credence.

11 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment, Property rights, Regulations and Government Oversight

Tagged ,

Pipeline Foes Appeal to FERC

Posted on October 27, 2015 by | 24 comments
This map shows approximate routes of four proposed natural gas pipelines running through Virginia. Image credit: Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition

This map shows approximate routes of four proposed natural gas pipelines running through Virginia. Image credit: Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition. (Click for larger image.)

by James A. Bacon

A coalition of pipeline opponents has called upon the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to conduct a comprehensive review of the need for four natural gas pipelines running through Virginia rather than reviewing them on their individual merits. The coalition, which includes numerous environmental and landowner groups, was joined by two Virginia state legislators: Sen. John S. Edwards, D-Roanoke, and Del. Joseph R. Yost, R-Giles.

Foes have raised a host of issues regarding the impact of the proposed pipeline projects on the environment and landowners. While the pipelines would be buried, their rights of way would be maintained clear of trees and brush, they argue, creating erosion issues, disrupting wildlife habitat, despoiling view sheds, and harming local agricultural, craft and tourism economies. Wider impacts from bolstering the consumption of natural gas would include an increase in the greenhouse gases implicated in global warming (CO2 and methane) and environmental damage caused by fracking.

Of the four pipeline projects, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) and the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) have been actively mapping of routes, and both have filed applications with FERC. Both MVP and ACP say demand for natural gas is increasing as electric utilities switch from coal to gas, and both companies have lined up customers to purchase most of the gas that would move through their pipelines. The public need, they say, is demonstrated by the fact that the pipelines have hard contractual commitments for the gas.

FERC has not accepted previous requests for comprehensive reviews, and the response of a FERC spokesperson did not suggest than any re-evaluation of its position was imminent. “The commission’s stance has been that we don’t develop infrastructure, that we process the applications that come through FERC,” spokesperson Tamara Young-Allen told the T-D.

But pipeline foes are giving it another try. The details of their arguments can be found in a letter to FERC addressing the Atlantic Coast Pipeline specifically.

Pipeline foes say FERC is required to determine whether a pipeline applicant has made efforts to minimize adverse effects upon landowners, communities, existing pipelines and their captive customers. “To demonstrate that its proposal is in the public convenience and necessity, an applicant must show public benefits that would be achieved by the project that are proportional to the project’s adverse impacts.”

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline, states the letter, does not provide any benefit that existing pipelines could not provide. Central to their argument is that new pipelines are not needed to meet the market’s growing demand for gas.

Evidence shows that significant existing pipeline capacity may be available to serve the South East and Mid-Atlantic markets. … Gas pipelines nationwide on average utilized only 54 percent of their capacity between 1998 and 2013. FERC has similarly acknowledged the underutilization of pipeline capacity and found that improved scheduling of natural gas deliveries would make “more efficient use of existing pipeline infrastructure.”

ACP would tap bountiful Marcellus shale gas deposits in West Virginia and Ohio, creating a supply alternative in Virginia and North Carolina to gas originating in the Gulf of Mexico. But foes argue that existing or already-approved pipelines to the north can move gas from Marcellus to the existing Transco superhighway pipeline, which serves Virginia markets. In the past Transco moved gas only from south to north. But by 2017 it will be able to move gas both directions, providing a way for Marcellus gas to reach Virginia markets.

Utilizing the existing infrastructure to the maximum extent possible, foes argue, would minimize the disruptive impact of building new pipelines.

For an in-depth discussion of the four Virginia pipeline projects, see “A Plethora of Pipelines.”

Update: Dominion, managing partner of the ACP, has provided a more detailed response than appeared in the T-D article: FERC will assess the cumulative effect of ACP and other proposed projects within a three-state region. ACP anticipates minimal impact due to “implementation of specialized construction techniques, the relatively short construction time frame in any one location, and carefully developed resource protection and mitigation plans.”

While critics have called for a programmatic Environmental Impact Statement — “a much broader, speculative regional analysis” — FERC has said in recent rulings and statements that an EIS  would not present “a credible forward look and would therefore not be a useful tool for basic program planning.”

24 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment, Regulations and Government Oversight

Tagged ,

How about Habitat Exchanges for the Cow Knob Salamander?

Posted on October 15, 2015 by | 12 comments
If ranchers, mineral companies and environmentalists can work together to protect the greater sage grouse, can't Virginians work together to protect the Cow Knob salamander?

If ranchers, mineral companies and environmentalists can work together to protect the greater sage grouse, can’t Virginians work together to protect the Cow Knob salamander?

by James A. Bacon

I’ve been cogitating a lot recently over the difficulty of building major infrastructure projects in Virginia that are vital to the economy yet intrude upon landowner rights and the environment. One problem, which I dubbed the “rule of firsties,” is the spreading conviction that existing landowners (the ones who got there first) have a right to undeveloped view sheds comprised of other peoples’ property. Another problem is the near impossibility of building a highway, power line or pipeline that doesn’t impinge upon some historical home, burial plot, neolithic Indian settlement or some Freebish Loutwort of a rare species. Most recently I highlighted the ruckus over the Cow Knob salamander whose habitat lies in the proposed path of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

It’s more difficult building Big Infrastructure today than it was a century ago because we value things that we didn’t back then and want to protect them. We don’t like bulldozing our history and cultural heritage. We don’t like driving endangered species into extinction. We don’t like steamrolling landowners who just want to be left alone. So, what’s to be done?

There are no easy answers, just different trade-offs. But some trade-offs arguably are less painful than others. When I wrote about the Cow Knob salamander yesterday, I suggested that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline might somehow mitigate or offset the effect of its destruction to the salamander’s habitat. Frankly, I had no clear idea how that might be done, although I was thinking vaguely that we could create a mechanism like wetlands banks, in which a developer or builder offsets the destruction of wetlands by creating new wetlands somewhere else.

Could we do something similar for Cow Knob salamanders? Well perhaps we can. The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has taken the lead in prairie and Rocky Mountain states to create “habitat exchanges” that are doing for the greater sage grouse, the lesser prairie chicken and the mule deer what I kinda, sorta had in mind for the salamander.

Writes Fred Krupp, president of the EDF in the Wall Street Journal today:

Think of it as an Airbnb for wildlife. Just as the online company Airbnb allows homeowners to get paid for opening a spare bedroom to travelers, habitat exchanges allow landowners to get paid for providing quality habitat for vulnerable wildlife. The revenue is supplied by infrastructure, energy and other developers, which need to mitigate the environmental impact of their projects. But concerned individuals, nongovernmental organizations or corporations can also share in the cost, donating funds to an exchange. …

Though it would be ideal to set aside enough habitat to ensure the survival of the nation’s critters, practically speaking we can’t. The best alternative is to share resources so everyone wins.

I don’t know what kind of legal framework might be needed for Virginians to start creating habitat exchanges, but someone ought to take a look. We likely won’t devise a solution in time to address concerns raised by the Atlantic Coast Pipeline or the Mountain Valley Pipeline, but you can rest assured that other Big Infrastructure projects will be proposed in the future and that the same kinds of issues will be raised. We can either stagger from one zero-sum-game slug-fest to another, or we can devise options like habitat exchanges to make the inevitable trade-offs less painful. The choice is ours.

Read more about habitat exchanges here.

12 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment, Infrastructure

Tagged ,

Virginia’s Answer to the Snail Darter?

Posted on October 14, 2015 by | 28 comments
Photo credit: Gary Nafis

Photo credit: Gary Nafis

by James A. Bacon

The proposed route for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline runs through the mountain habitat of the Cow Knob salamander, creating a new rallying point for pipeline foes. National forest officials say the pipeline should be routed around salamander territory or even under it by drilling through Shenandoah Mountain, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

“Even the most minor habitat alteration can cause detrimental effects to these salamanders,” says Jennifer Adams, special project coordinator for the George Washington and Jefferson National forests.

For its part, Dominion, managing partner of the pipeline, says it is working with federal officials to resolve the issue. “We are currently evaluating potential options and are planning to meet with the Forest Service to discuss these options that provide the avoidance it has requested,” said Dominion spokesman Jim Norvelle.

Source: Department of Game and Inland Fisheries

Source: Department of Game and Inland Fisheries

Virginia’s mountains are literally crawling with salamanders, many species of which are rare due to the fact that mountainous terrain creates isolated gene pools. Three species — the Shenandoah, the Peaks of Otter and the Big Levels — live only in Virginia. The Cow Knob salamander, whose range overlaps Virginia and West Virginia, is described by the Virginia and West Virginia Draft State Wildlife Action Plans as facing “an extremely high risk of extinction or extirpation.” The species enjoys a variety of conservation protections in the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, Virginia’s largest wilderness area.

The proposed pipeline would “kill numerous Cow Knob salamanders” by destroying habit directly through forest clearing and indirectly by exposing the forest edge to sunlight, wind and edge predators, says H. Thomas Speaks Jr., Forest Service forest supervisor, in a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Further, by dividing the salamander habitat into southern and northern portions, the pipeline will limit gene flow between the two populations, potentially threatening the viability of the southern population.

Bacon’s bottom line: On the face of it, this sounds like a win-lose proposition. Either the pipeline people win and the salamander loses, or the salamander wins and the pipeline project faces horrendous additional costs. But could there be a compromise?

Speaks’ letter emphasizes that the salamander is threatened by the loss and fragmentation of its habitat. Especially detrimental are utilities, roads and other types of development that penetrate the forest, creating a new “edge” ecosystem inhospitable to the Cow Knob salamander, especially to predators such as raccoons. Two questions: (1) Can Dominion mitigate the impact of its clear-cutting the forest to build the pipeline; and (2) can Dominion offset the impact by mitigating negative impact elsewhere, much as road builders might offset the loss of wetlands by creating wetlands elsewhere?

The Speaks letter mentions some possibilities:

  • Restoration of currently disturbed habitats
  • Acquisition of more habitat
  • Permit vegetative cover of pipeline corridor suitable for Cow Knob salamanders

All of these measures will entail additional expense or inconvenience, which Dominion says will get passed on to pipeline customers. But that expense should be less than the cost of drilling 4,000 feet through Shenandoah Mountain or selecting a different, longer pipeline route.

28 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment

Tagged ,