The Census Bureau is looking to hire hundreds of census takers in Charlottesville and Albemarle County.
With a new decade comes a new census. Starting March 12, every household across the country will receive a letter in the mail, explaining how to respond to the 2020 census by phone, mail, or—for the first time ever—online.
Census data is used to redraw legislative districts, determining the amount of seats each state is allotted in the House of Representatives, as well as to appropriately distribute more than $675 billion in government funding to communities across the country.
“The census is tied to everything, from health care to housing to social services,” says Kathy O’Connell, who works for the division of the census that oversees Virginia. “It’s extremely important that we have a good count of who lives in a particular place.”
To catch those who don’t respond on their own, the bureau also employs census takers to go door to door and record responses in person. And it is looking to hire hundreds right here in Charlottesville.
“We need large numbers,” says O’Connell, “We are [especially] interested in candidates with language abilities.”
To encourage more people to apply, the bureau has raised the pay for census workers to $22 an hour in Charlottesville and $21.50 in Albemarle County. Other perks include paid training, weekly paychecks, mileage reimbursement, and flexible hours.
Some populations are underrepresented in the data, particularly young people and immigrant communities. Our local Complete Count Committee includes a subcommittee focused on ensuring that refugees and immigrants are aware of the census, as well as identifying and addressing what prevents these populations from participating, such as limited English proficiency and mistrust of the government, says committee co-chair Caitlin Reinhard.
To subvert the many misconceptions surrounding the census, the subcommittee is emphasizing to local communities that the census is confidential, and that “it will have a huge impact on the resources and representation available [to them] over the next 10 years,” Reinhard says.
The Census Bureau is also partnering with a variety of local organizations to increase its outreach. Here in Charlottesville, the International Rescue Committee has created postcards and posters in 10 different languages about the census, along with other informational materials.
“It’s hugely important—now more than ever—that their voices are heard,” says Reinhard, who is also the resettlement manager for the IRC, “and that they are counted as people who make up this great country, whether or not they’re citizens.” (The Trump administration’s attempt to add a question about citizenship status was struck down by the Supreme Court.)
Lakshmi Fjord, a visiting scholar at UVA’s Department of Anthropology, has witnessed the consequences of inadequate census data firsthand. As Dominion Energy worked to build a natural gas compressor station in the historically African American community of Union Hill, the company used broad data from the 2010 census to claim that the area was sparsely populated and predominantly white.
However, by conducting a door-to-door count of the population, Fjord showed that Union Hill has a greater population density than all other parts of the county, with 83 percent minority residents—meaning the compressor would disproportionately (and illegally) affect African Americans. (The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals repealed Dominion’s permit last month.)
“It’s well known that in particularly rural, and maybe everywhere in African American communities, there is far less chance people will open their door to census takers…[so] we trusted elders from the community to go door-to-door,” Fjord says. “This is also an important thing for the census. You cannot just hire eager young people to go around because there’s just not a sense of who they are.”
For this reason, O’Connell strongly encourages residents who are from the local community and know it well to apply to be census takers. Applications are available now at 2020census.gov.
Former vice president Al Gore said the Atlantic Coast Pipeline is a reckless, racist ripoff at a February 19 event in Buckingham County, where Dominion wants to run the pipeline and build one of three compressor stations. Photo by John Robinson
It’s long been clear that the folks of the small, predominately black Union Hill community in bucolic Buckingham County don’t want the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and its compressor station on their soil. And now two well-known voices who condemn environmental racism are joining the fight against it.
Former vice president Al Gore and Reverend William Barber, known across the country for his ministry and political activism, came to Buckingham February 19 and told a crowd of hundreds of community members and allies they oppose what they believe is a risky, expensive, and unnecessary natural gas pipeline that Dominion has intentionally chosen to run through a poor, black neighborhood.
“This is what change looks like,” Gore said to the folks who had spent the night dancing, singing and chanting, holding hands, and pumping fists in solidarity with Union Hill. He added, “I think Dominion is messing with the wrong part of Virginia.”
The former vice president, who also serves as founder and chairman of Climate Reality Project, said the Federal Energy Regulatory Commision never should have given Dominion permission to start building the ACP in the first place, and that current gas pipelines in the country have almost twice as much capacity as the amount of gas flowing through them. Demand for natural gas has decreased as people switch to renewable energy sources and use newer energy-saving technology such as LED lighting, he added.
“This proposed pipeline is a reckless, racist ripoff,” said Gore loudly and passionately into his microphone, bringing most of the crowd to its feet.
Big utility companies like Dominion don’t really make their money by selling electricity or gas, he said, but by building new capacity and adding the cost into their rate base. “If the pipeline is not needed, they have a powerful economic incentive to build it anyway,” he said, echoing what ACP opponents have contended since it was proposed half a decade ago.
The Union Hill story sparked Gore’s interest when he read about a historically significant, low-income community of color being “insulted and abused” by Dominion, which is trying to wreak havoc on a community it thought couldn’t defend itself, he said.
“We’re here to say to Union Hill, you are not standing alone,” said Gore. “We are standing with you.”
ACP spokesperson Karl Neddenien says Dominion has “profound respect” for the Union Hill community, and it plans to invest $5 million to build a community center and upgrade the county’s rescue squad.
Dominion says it chose Union Hill for one of three of the pipeline’s compressor stations because it intersects with an existing pipeline, and because the for-sale property was large enough to also allow for trees and vegetation on-site, with the nearest home a quarter-mile away. The other two, one at the beginning of the pipeline’s route in Lewis County, West Virginia, and the other near the Virginia-North Carolina State line, have also prompted pushback.
Part of Dominion’s justification was also its calculation of approximately 29.6 people per square mile in the surrounding area. Residents say that number is off by about 500 percent, and during their own door-to-door survey of the Union Hill area, they determined that approximately 85 percent of those people are African American.
A third of the county’s residents are descendants of the freedmen community that was established there by former slaves. Dominion is planning to build the compressor station atop freedmen cemeteries and unmarked slave burials, according to Yogaville resident and cultural anthropologist Lakshmi Fjord, who spoke briefly at the event.
Attendees also heard from Mary Finley-Brook, a University of Richmond professor of geography and the environment who served on Governor Ralph Northam’s Advisory Council on Environmental Justice, which recommended against the pipeline last summer. She said her council exposed disproportionate risks for minority communities if the pipeline is built.
“Historic Union Hill is the wrong place to build a compressor station,” said Finley-Brook, who pointed out that poor internet and phone access in Buckingham could mean residents won’t be properly notified of scheduled blowdowns at the station, when gas and toxic air pollutants are released to relieve pressure in the pipe. She also noted the daily safety risk of fires or explosions due to highly pressurized gas equipment and flammable contents.
Reverend Barber touched on how environmental racism is systemic, and how pipelines like the ACP don’t usually run through affluent areas, though politicians and other people of power will encourage poorer communities to accept them.
“Everybody that tells you to be alright with it coming through your community—ask them why it isn’t coming through theirs,” said Barber.
Dominion’s Neddenien says safety standards at the compressor station, if built, will be the strictest of any compressor station in the country, and emissions will be 50 to 80 percent lower than any other station in Virginia.
Barber counters if Northam truly believes that, “request it to be in your backyard.”
Barber also said the power to protest the pipeline lies in the hands of the community, and clarified that he and Gore came to Buckingham by invitation.
“We didn’t come here to lead the fight, we just came here to say, ‘Y’all fight like you never fought before.’”
Irene Ellis Leach is one of those Union Hill community members. Her family has operated a farm four miles away from the proposed site of the compressor station for 117 years, where original buildings built in 1804 are still standing. She says Dominion insists on crossing through the middle of the cattle fields she uses most.
Now she’s one of many landowners in the incineration zone, or the potential impact radius, of 1,100 feet on either side of the pipeline. If it blows, that’s how far the flames will reach.
“If something goes wrong, the resulting fire can’t be put out. It has to burn out,” she says. “We could lose everything, including our lives.”
The Union Hill community has been united in fighting the Atlantic Coast Pipeline for four years. Courtesy of Friends of Buckingham
About 50 miles south of Charlottesville, in the small, quiet community of Union Hill, there are far more “No Pipeline” signs than traffic lights.
The historic town of weather-faded homes and churches in bucolic Buckingham County could soon be sliced by the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, and in what residents say would add insult to injury, it could become home to one of the 600-mile natural gas pipeline’s three proposed compressor stations.
Residents are calling it “blatant environmental racism,” and allege Dominion intentionally erased a large percentage of their population in its application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to build the pipeline.
In the final environmental impact statement on the ACP, FERC stated that, on average, there are 29.6 people per square mile in the area surrounding the pipeline’s path in Buckingham—that number was provided by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Residents say that number was off by about 500 percent.
Members of the anti-pipeline group Friends of Buckingham went door-to-door to survey the Union Hill area. They spoke with 64 percent of the people living in the 99 households within that square mile, and of those 158 residents, 85 percent are African American.
The FERC report didn’t mention Union Hill, where a third of the residents are descendants of the freedmen community that was once enslaved there, and where there are freedmen cemeteries and unmarked slave burials on the site where Dominion wants to build its compressor station, according to Yogaville resident and cultural anthropologist Lakshmi Fjord.
She also noted that Charlottesville’s 29 bypass project was halted by just one slave burial site.
On May 31, the governor’s Advisory Council on Environmental Justice met in Buckingham to report some of its findings, make recommendations and host a public comment session, but beforehand, members stopped by the Union Hill Baptist Church for a quick presentation and tour of the proposed compressor station site.
“Now we are in our golden years, and we’d like to keep it that way,” said John Laury as he stood at the front of the pews. He listed his grievances, including the poisonous air that he says the station, if approved, would emit, and its potential effect on water quality in the town where most people rely on wells. “That’s the only water we have,” he said.
Laury, who lives with his wife, Ruby, on the cattle farm down the hill and to the left of the Baptist church, was born and raised in Buckingham. He says he likes theclean air that his county is knownfor, the nearby wooded areas brimming with wildlife and the constant hum of birds chirping.
“We want to remain here without interruption from big corporations,” he told the governor’s council before its members filed into a big white church van. Laury drove them less than half a mile to the proposed compressor station site.
There, a large swath of land has been cleared because four Transco pipelines, which carry gas from Texas to New York City, already exist under the soil. The ACP would connect to one of the existing pipelines at the 55,000-horsepower compressor station, and transfer the fracked gas up the east coast.
To the left of the existing clear cut, just into the trees, is where Dominion would like to connect the ACP to the Transco line and build its aboveground compressor station.
Nothing can be built and no trees can be planted on the Transco pipeline corridor, according to Fjord, “which is why it is so galling to landowners to have their farmland seized on working farms, where it bisects the fields they grow, where their cattle graze.”
“No tractor or car can cross over one,” says Fjord. “Nothing. Yet, farmers in Buckingham will have to pay the same property taxes on the pipeline easements as if they were working farmland.”
Dominion spokesperson Aaron Ruby says once construction on the pipeline is completed, “the only restrictions on the use of the right of way are planting trees and building structures.”
Ann Loomis, Dominion Energy’s vice president of federal affairs, spoke at the governor’s council meeting. She noted that Dominion employs 42 county residents at its Bear Garden Power Station in Buckingham, and said Dominion is a member of the community.
University of Richmond professor of geography and the environment Mary Finley-Brook, who serves on the council’s pipeline subcommittee, gave a report on what her group has learned so far. She also said it does not recommend construction of the ACP.
If it gets built, Finley-Brook said residents can prepare for Dominion to make environmental violations because it already has a record, including several citations from when it started cutting down trees earlier this year. And “blowdowns,” or release of gas (and toxic air pollutants) to relieve pressure in the pipe, happen about 10 times per year at compressor station sites (a figure that Dominion estimates at once every five years). Finley-Brook also noted Dominion’s underreporting of the Union Hill population.
“This was, in my own professional opinion, not an accident,” she said. “This inaccurate information is a tactic that has been used successfully many times.”
The more rural and less densely populated an area is, the thinner the pipe is permitted to be, and fewer shut-off valves are required, she said.
As for the public health impact, she said, “Compressor stations make people sick.”
Pipeline opponent Suzanne Keller, a retired epidemiologist with the Virginia Department of Health, said Buckingham residents can expect around 350 tons of air pollutants to be released each year.
The crowd of about 50 people heard from Michael Dowd, a Department of Environmental Quality representative, who drew jeers when he said, “The community’s health will be protected.” He added, “I can’t guarantee that there won’t be accidents or events at the compressor station.”
But Dowd did make a promise: “The Buckingham compressor will be among the most, if not the most, stringently regulated compression stations in the country.”
There to give a personal testimony was Ray Kemble, a Dimock, Pennsylvania, resident in a Rolling Thunder motorcycle jacket who’s lived near six compressor stations for several years.
The small town of Dimock was featured in the 2010 documentary Gasland, which showed residents lighting their tap water on fire.
Kemble carried a bottle of water that he drew from his neighbor’s well. It was brown and swirled with oil when he shook it. Kemble said he’s been diagnosed with three types of cancer since the compressor stations were built, and he keeps oxygen tanks at his house, so when the air gets too noxious from blowdowns, he has clean oxygen to breathe. He said he often has to leave his home because the air quality is so bad.
Marie Gillespie. Courtesy photo
The council heard from Marie Gillespie, who lives on Union Hill Road adjacent to where Dominion has already cleared a strip of land for the ACP.
“I think I’m the first person who has been directly impacted by the pipeline and compressor station,” she said, describing hearing an awful noise in her backyard, rushing to get dressed and go outside to see the commotion. By the time she did, the trees were already gone.
“I was stricken,” she said. “I was heartbroken. …The stress has already started. Problems have already begun, and I don’t know where it’s going to end.”
Pastor Paul Wilson. Courtesy photo
Pastor Paul Wilson, who leads the Union Hill and Union Grove Baptist churches, also spoke.
“We are ground zero,” he said, and echoed a popular argument against the ACP. “This whole pipeline is based on false premises. Politicians were bought off, and this county had no choice but to say yes.”
Added Wilson, “We refuse to be the sacrificial lamb.”
And another commenter, through tears, and while banging her balled fist, said, “Nobody’s protecting us. Not a soul.” Her last remark drew enormous energy from the pipeline opponents in the room: “We are going to fight this fight. This is not a done deal.”
Updated June 6 at 3:50pm to correct the source of the data used in the FERC’s environmental impact statement and to include Dominion’s response to claims by Lakshmi Fjord and Mary Finley-Brook.
Updated June 7 at 3:15 with the correct number of Transco pipelines that already exist in Buckingham County, and with the correct project in Charlottesville that was stopped by one slave burial site.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released its final environmental impact statement for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline July 21, and it said the proposed 600-mile, $5.5 billion natural gas pipeline will have a “less than significant” impact on the environment.
“The [final environmental impact statement] paints a terrifying picture of a bleak future,” says Ernie Reed, the president of anti-pipeline group Friends of Nelson.
According to Reed, the ACP will eliminate almost 5,000 acres of interior forest habitat and destroy 200 acres of national forests and nearly 2,000 waterbody crossings along its path from West Virginia to North Carolina. “And all this to give Dominion and Duke Energy enough gas to burn our way into hell,” he adds.
Dominion Energy and Duke Energy are the major companies backing the ACP.
Also on July 21, the U.S. Forest Service released a draft of the record of decision, which said the ACP “can be implemented with limited adverse impacts,” and, in its final form, will authorize the use and occupancy of National Forest System land for the ACP through the George Washington and Monongahela national forests.
Environmentalists allege that the documents fail to depict the pipeline’s true effects, and that some biological evaluations, road analyses and consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are incomplete.
“It is interesting that this decision was made by the regional foresters in offices hundreds of miles away from these forests,” says Reed. “No one who has stepped foot in these forests could ever come to such a delusional conclusion.”
FERC found that the ACP could negatively impact seven endangered species: the Indiana bat, northern long-eared bat, Roanoke logperch, Madison Cave isopod, clubshell mussel, running buffalo clover and small whorled pogonia.
“It is outrageous that the Forest Service would sign off on a scheme like this with the full knowledge that it will harm endangered species,” says Misty Boos, executive director of environmental group Wild Virginia, which has also been vocal in its opposition to the pipeline.
She says FERC’s final environmental impact statement and the Forest Service’s record of decisions “make it clear that we cannot rely on the federal government to protect our forests and drinking water,” and that the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality has the authority to reverse the two groups’ decisions.
“All eyes are on the DEQ in the coming weeks,” Boos says. “They must do what the feds have not and choose our safety over private profits.”
Wild Virginia will submit a formal objection to the draft record of decision, and “litigation is certain to follow,” according to a press release.
Dominion continues to assert that its pipeline will be safe for all.
“Over the last three years, we’ve taken unprecedented steps to protect environmental resources and minimize impacts on landowners,” says Leslie Hartz, Dominion Energy’s vice president of engineering and construction. She says her team has made more than 300 route adjustments to avoid environmentally sensitive areas. “In many areas of the project, we’ve adopted some of the most protective construction methods that have ever been used by the industry.”
Construction on the pipeline could begin by the end of the year, according to Dominion.
SolUnesco’s solar farm in Albemarle will be similar to Dominion’s in Louisa, which produces enough energy to power 5,000 homes a year. Courtesy Dominion
Clean energy is on the rise, and Reston-based group SolUnesco is planning to build a 70-acre solar farm in Albemarle County, which would be the first of its kind in the area. One local nature enthusiast, however, says these “so-called green energy sources” aren’t as harmless to the environment as many people think.
“Although green power sources may emit fewer or no carbon emissions as compared to coal, their use, when employed on a large scale, results in a variety of wildlife losses,” says nature writer Marlene Condon. “The deployment of acres and acres of solar panel arrays destroys habitat for the variety of wildlife they displace.”
In some instances, the solar array itself has caused the death of certain avian species. Birds can mistake a reflective solar facility for a body of water and plunge into it, she says. A bird’s feathers can also ignite after flying through a concentrated beam of sunlight.
Condon points to a U.S. Fish & Wildlife Forensics Laboratory investigation in which scientists found that 233 birds recovered from three desert solar power plants in California had been “fatally singed, broken or otherwise fatally crippled by the facilities.”
“No one knows just how many birds are being killed by the growing numbers of these facilities, but the numbers are high enough that people should be concerned,” Condon says. She suggests placing large solar systems only in developed areas, such as on the rooftops of businesses or on the properties of derelict malls or parking lots.
The Albemarle County Board of Supervisors approved a zoning amendment in June that will allow solar farms in the county’s rural areas. SolUnesco’s system, if approved, will generate 11 megawatts of energy—or enough to power about 2,000 homes a year. It’s planned for the intersection of the Thomas Jefferson Parkway and Buck Island Road.
Seth Maughan, SolUnesco’s director of projects, says the state’s Department of Environmental Quality will evaluate any potential environmental damage before approving the project. As for a bird mistaking a solar farm for a body of water, he’s “never heard that at all.”
Though he is aware that systems like his company’s may cause wildlife habitat loss, Maughan stresses that the objective of a solar farm is to benefit the environment.
In neighboring Louisa County, Dominion Energy has constructed a $44 million Whitehouse solar facility, where 84,000 panels on a 230-acre farm produce about 20 megawatts a year. That’s enough to power 5,000 homes, according to Dominion spokesperson Daisy Pridgen.
She says her crew hasn’t documented any “avian mortalities” at any of their solar sites, which are comprised of photovoltaic solar arrays that don’t use a concentrated solar design like some located in the west where the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Forensics Laboratory investigated the dead birds. SolUnesco’s design will also be photovoltaic.
And at the Ivy Material Utilization Center—the former Ivy Landfill—the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority’s board of directors announced June 28 the signing of a land lease to install a solar array on 10 to 14 acres of the property. Though this two-megawatt system is more than five times smaller than SolUnesco’s, RSWA reps say it should still produce enough energy to power about 1,000 homes a year.
“Economically and environmentally, this project makes sense,” says Bill Mawyer, RSWA’s executive director. The solar panels are expected to rake in $10,000 a year in revenue over the 25-year span of the lease. Construction is scheduled for next summer.
Though solar projects are gaining traction in Virginia, Condon says it would be smart to pump the brakes.
“When all’s said and done, we are not going to survive if we lose too much wildlife, a situation that we are moving toward at breakneck speed,” Condon says. “Our lives depend upon the proper functioning of the environment, and the proper functioning of the environment depends totally upon the jobs performed by wildlife for our benefit.”
Says Condon, “It’s high time people wake up to this truism and start taking the needs of wildlife into account.”
Drainage from a mountain named Big Ridge will affect two of the state’s remaining native brook trout streams, Townsend Draft and Erwin Draft. Photo courtesy of Rick Webb
In an April 27 telepresser, a number of environmental groups discussed Dominion’s alleged plans to decapitate 38 miles of ridgelines in Virginia and West Virginia to make way for the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline. About 5.6 of those miles are atop Roberts Mountain in Nelson County.
Moderated by the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, spokespeople from anti-pipeline groups Friends of Nelson, Appalachian Mountain Advocates and the Allegheny-Blue Ridge Alliance discussed some key points of mountaintop removal, including that the majority of the mountains in question would be flattened by 10 to 20 feet, with some places along the route requiring the removal of about 60 feet of ridgetop.
Mountaintop removal also results in an excess of material, known as overburden. In this case, Dominion would likely need to dispose of about 2.47 million cubic yards of it, according to the environmental groups.
“The information that was put out by these groups last week is just totally inaccurate,” says Dominion spokesperson Aaron Ruby. “We’re not conducting mountaintop removal. That is a total mischaracterization of how we’re building this pipeline.”
According to Ruby, Dominion will “clear and grade a relatively limited area on certain ridgelines,” so workers will have enough space to dig a 10-foot-wide trench, install the pipe and fill the trench back in.
“It is astounding that [the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] has not required Dominion to produce a plan for dealing with the millions of cubic yards of excess [overburden],” says Ben Luckett, a staff attorney at Appalachian Mountain Advocates. FERC will eventually approve or deny the project.
But Ruby says that claim from Luckett isn’t true, either. “We are required by federal regulations to fully restore those ridgelines to their original contours using the native material that is either graded or excavated. …For these groups to say we’re going to level the tops of mountains and remove 250,000 dump truck loads of material is completely inaccurate.”
Approximately two miles of ridgeline are proposed to be removed (and replaced) in western Highland County in the George Washington National Forest. According to Rick Webb, the program coordinator for the Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition, drainage from a mountain there named Big Ridge will affect two of the state’s remaining native brook trout streams, Townsend Draft and Erwin Draft.
“The Atlantic Coast Pipeline could easily prove itself deadly,” says Joyce Burton, a board member of Friends of Nelson. “Many of the slopes along the right of way are significantly steeper than a black diamond ski slope. Both FERC and Dominion concede that constructing pipelines on these steep slopes can increase the potential for landslides, yet they still have not demonstrated how they propose to protect us from this risk. With all of this, it is clear that the pipeline is a recipe for disaster.”
Ruby says his company has extensively studied all of the steep slopes they will encounter while installing the ACP and have developed a best-in-class program for construction on those areas that goes beyond federal regulations and has been thoroughly evaluated by FERC, which confirmed its effectiveness.
“My company has built over 2,000 miles of underground pipeline through West Virginia and Western Pennsylvania,” he says. “How many pipelines has the Chesapeake Climate Action Network built?”
In May, members of a Wintergreen nonprofit organization submitted four requests to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to reroute the Atlantic Coast Pipeline out of their town. One of their ideas? Run it through Albemarle County, instead.
The 600-mile, 42-inch natural gas line is currently proposed to slice through the outskirts of the Wintergreen community on its way from Lyndhurst to an area just north of Farmville. The group, called Friends of Wintergreen, has attempted to get around Dominion by submitting the new route proposals directly to FERC, which will ultimately rule on whether the pipeline will be approved and where it will run.
Friends of Wintergreen has publicly stated that it does not oppose the ACP, generally. “Their primary purpose is to try to get it away from their businesses in the Wintergreen community,” says Kirk Bowers, the Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club’s pipelines campaign manager.
“Dominion’s proposed route will cut through the main street of one of Virginia’s largest tourism [areas], shutting down two new hotel developments and killing hundreds of new planned tourism jobs,” says Jonathan Ansell, chairman of Friends of Wintergreen. “There are examples of better and possible alternatives,” he says, such as running a pipeline alongside an existing one.
Friends of Wintergreen has proposed a new Atlantic Coast Pipeline route that would send it through Albemarle County.
The proposed route would divert the pipeline through Fluvanna and then North Garden, instead of through Wintergreen, but Ansell says the entire route, including what Friends of Wintergreen has drafted to run through Nelson County, would be located in existing rights of way, including railroads, highways and electric transmission lines, causing less damage than the route proposed by Dominion, according to Ansell.
“It’s standard operating procedure for Dominion to dismiss any solutions other than their own,” Ansell says. “In our case, they claim our routes are unbuildable for land use [or] constructability reasons. Our engineers and environmental teams, who have closely evaluated their claims, disagree.”
But Dominion spokesperson Aaron Ruby says the construction challenges, as well as laws protecting federally managed land, make the nonprofit’s requests infeasible.
“We’ve looked very carefully at each of these routes and we’ve given them the careful consideration that they deserve,” Ruby says. “They’re well-intentioned, but it does not appear that all of the various factors that you have to weigh when developing a proposed route were carefully considered.”
He says Dominion has made more than 300 adjustments to the proposed pipeline’s path to limit impacts on the environment, individual landowners and cultural and historic resources.
While the decision is in FERC’s hand, the commission does not have a deadline to which it must respond to Friends of Wintergreen, according to Ansell.
“Fortunately for Albemarle, we’re already well-organized here,” says Bowers, who nods to local pipeline-opposing groups, such as 350.org, Appalachian Voices and Appalachian Mountain Advocates. He calls Friends of Wintergreen’s plan to locate the ACP in Albemarle, “just a pipe dream.”
Bowers says no matter where the pipeline is located it will contribute significantly to climate change across the state.
There are currently 49.7 million tons of carbon dioxide in Virginia, according to measurements taken from 177 stationary points by the Sierra Club, which calculated that the 300-foot Mountain Valley Pipeline—slated to run from northwestern West Virginia in Bradshaw to Pittsylvania County in southern Virginia—and ACP, if approved, would contribute another 95 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year.
“So, if you are concerned about climate change and the heating effect,” Bowers says, “it is tremendous when you triple the amount of greenhouse gases you put into the atmosphere.”
Additionally, Ansell says Virginians need to understand that the approval of the ACP will prolong dependence on fracking and fossil fuels by a generation.
“This is especially troubling as the $45 billion energy company was recently ranked as one of the lowest users of renewable energy in America,” Ansell says, referring to a recent benchmark by Clean Edge—a group of clean energy researchers in Portland and San Francisco—which ranked Dominion dead last out of the top 30 U.S. investor-owned utilities in the category of incremental energy efficiency.
“Dominion is the largest corporate contributor to politicians in the commonwealth, effectively immunizing itself from contrary political pressure,” he says. “When’s the last time you heard a politician publicly criticize Dominion for being irresponsible?”
Updated July 13 at 10:19am to clarify that the pipeline’s proposed route runs through the outskirts of the Wintergreen community and not through Wintergreen Resort. It also stops just north of Farmville.
Wastewater will be discharged from the Bremo Power Plant in Fluvanna County. Photo by Robert Llewellyn
Charlottesville’s Southern Environmental Law Center, representing the James River Association, reached a settlement with Dominion on the utility’s plans to dump coal ash wastewater from the Bremo Power Station in Fluvanna. A local riverkeeper says new standards will protect human and aquatic life.
The deal between the groups, which will be enforceable by law, requires Dominion to go beyond the Department of Environmental Quality’s expectations, enhance the treatment of the pond water and to monitor the river’s fish. The SELC, in turn, will not appeal the wastewater permit issued to the Bremo Power Station.
“We had to act,” says Pat Calvert, a James River Association riverkeeper who is trained to monitor river water for pollution. The DEQ had already issued Dominion a permit to dump the wastewater and a crew is currently setting up the required systems at the power plant. “It was coming down to the wire for us.”
While Dominion’s permit allows a high concentration of metals in coal ash—arsenic, chromium, lead and cadmium—to be dumped, Calvert says the SELC was able to create a plan that wouldn’t require changing the permit, but would obligate the power company to follow guidelines set in an engineering plan and install better technology.
According to the Clean Water Act, companies treating water must use the best available technology.
“It’s DEQ’s responsibility to ensure protective permits and that didn’t happen,” Calvert says, adding that the Potomac Riverkeeper Network, which is also represented by the SELC, is still working to reach a similar settlement with Dominion for the power plant at Possum Point.
“DEQ’s weak permits compel us to fight for strong, enforceable limits that require Dominion to treat its coal ash waste with the best available technology,” SELC senior attorney Greg Buppert said in a statement. “We cannot only rely on Dominion to police itself at Possum Point. That means seeking a court order for the Potomac River to require the removal of enough arsenic and toxic metals to protect the river ecology and public health.”
The written statement says Dominion’s own records show that coal ash pits at Possum Point have leaked toxins into the groundwater and public waterways for over 30 years.
But at the James, Calvert says locals can rest easy knowing that “people who fish, swim and play in the water are going to be protected.”
“We are pleased that this agreement with the James River Association allows us to move ahead with this important environmental project,” said Pam Faggert, chief environmental officer for Dominion in a joint statement between both groups that was released after the settlement. “The James River Association has helped us create a plan that reflects the commitment of both of our organizations to maintain the quality of the James River.”
The Atlantic Coast Pipeline’s proposed route through the George Washington and Monongahela national forests has been scrapped due to "sensitive resources" such as the cow know salamander. Photo credit: Gary Nafis
The Atlantic Coast Pipeline’s proposed route through the George Washington and Monongahela national forests has been scrapped—a very big deal for the future of the pipeline, according to opponents—and Dominion must now begin looking for an alternate.
The U.S. Forest Service rejected the ACP’s application for a special use permit January 21, requiring a new path or system alternatives to the 550-mile natural gas pipeline, which would run through West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina. Almost 50 miles of the previously proposed route cut through two national forests.
Citing “highly sensitive resources” such as West Virginia northern flying squirrels, red spruce ecosystem restoration areas and Cheat Mountain and cow knob salamanders, the U.S. Forest Service wrote in its denial that the new path must avoid assets with “such irreplaceable character.”
Dominion has already proposed several pipeline routes, all of which have been denied. Opponents say the latest denial is likely to set the project back even further.
“We’re thrilled the forest service followed through on its duty to protect the forests,” says Ben Luckett, attorney with Appalachian Mountain Advocates in a release. “Dominion’s arrogance in trying to force its project into an entirely inappropriate area is shocking.”
Dominion spokesperson Jim Norvelle says the ACP will continue to work with the forest service.
“Today’s letter is part of the permitting process as we work cooperatively to find the best route with the least impact,” he says. “We appreciate the USFS’s examination of this option and remain confident we will find an acceptable route.”
Wastewater will be discharged from the Bremo Power Plant in Fluvanna County. Photo by Robert Llewellyn
The State Water Control Board officially approved Dominion’s permit to dump wastewater into two Virginia rivers January 14.
The wastewater will come from coal ash pits at the Bremo Power Station on the James River and the Possum Point plant on the Potomac River. The board took two separate votes, tallying 5-1 for each permit.
In a previous C-VILLE report about the Bremo Power Station in Fluvanna County, Dominion spokesperson Dan Genest said as soon as the permit was issued, the company would start building two treatment facilities on the property. All wastewater will be treated before it’s discharged, he said.
The Department of Environmental Quality had previously issued the permit, but allowed public comment until December 14.
“We are disappointed that the board voted to approve a lax permit that fails to protect the health of the James River,” says Brad McLane, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville. “We are seriously considering an appeal of the permit.”
