Mountain Valley Pipeline. Image source: The Virginia Mercury.
by James C. Sherlock
The green wall preventing businesses from operating at some level of certainty when and if their development proposals will be approved is missing a brick today.
The days of a Virginia State Air Pollution Control Board and State Water Control Board overruling the findings of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality in permitting matters are over.
SB 657 passed the House and is on its way to the Governor.
“Air Pollution Control Board and State Water Control Board; transfer of authority to Department of Environmental Quality. Limits the authority of the Air Pollution Control Board and the State Water Control Board to issuance of regulations and transfers the Boards’ existing authority to issue permits and orders to the Department of Environmental Quality. The bill provides procedures for public comment on pending controversial permits, defined in the bill, and on regulatory changes necessary to implement the provisions of the bill. Air Pollution Control Board and State Water Control Board; transfer of authority to Department of Environmental Quality. Limits the authority of the Air Pollution Control Board and the State Water Control Board to issuance of regulations and transfers the Boards’ existing authority to issue permits and orders to the Department of Environmental Quality. The bill provides procedures for public comment on pending controversial permits, defined in the bill, and on regulatory changes necessary to implement the provisions of the bill.”
Those two boards earned their dismissal from important permits and orders matters. The last straws were overruling the Mountain Valley Pipeline and water permits for chicken farms on the Eastern Shore.
Virginia was nearly alone in this add-on bureaucratic process.
It exists no more.
