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Hundreds Trek To Virginia’s Capitol To Support Environmental Bills

VCU CNS | January 20, 2020

Topics: alternative energy sources, Atlantic Coast Pipeline, carbon emissions, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, coal ash, Dominion Energy, Environmental Justice Act, Fair Energy Bills Act, Jennifer Carroll Foy, Lionell Spruill, Ralph Northam, renewable energy, Sierra Club, Virginia Clean Economy Act

Supporting alternative energy, lowering carbon emissions, and protecting Virginia’s vulnerable communities were important issues to the crowd that gathered at the Capitol building.

Hundreds of clean energy supporters trekked to the State Capitol last week demanding Virginia move away from reliance on carbon-based energy, invest in alternative energy supplies, and lower rates for customers.

At the rally, hosted Tuesday by the Sierra Club Virginia Chapter, Chesapeake Climate Action Network Action Fund, and other environmental organizations, participants pushed for Virginia to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, an effort to cap and reduce carbon emissions from the power sector. 

Gov. Ralph Northam supported the initiative in his 2020 budget proposal by including $733 million in new funding for the environment and clean energy. 

“In Virginia, we are proving that a clean environment and a strong economy go hand-in-hand — and having both is what makes our Commonwealth such a great place to live, work and play,” Northam said in a press release. 

Supporters of clean energy gather on the Capitol steps. Photo by Jeffrey Knight

Organizations lobbied for bills that seek to depart from a reliance on fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. One focus was House Bill 1526 and its counterpart Senate Bill 851, known as the Virginia Clean Economy Act. 

These bills would develop mandatory standards, annual timelines and call for specific reductions of carbon emissions, with the goal to hit 0 percent by 2050. The bills also push for offshore wind operations and solar energy generation. 

“I’m 100% for environmental issues,” Sen. Lionell Spruill Sr., D-Chesapeake, and co-patron of SB 851, said to supporters of the bill during the rally. “If I have to stand alone for environmental issues, I will do it alone.”

After supporters met with legislators, they reconvened at the nearby St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, where they heard speakers champion environmental justice and steps to combat climate change. 

Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy, D-Prince William, took to the podium during the rally to address coal ash, a by-product of burning coal in power plants that contains arsenic, mercury, and other metals.

“Most of our environmental impacts, not only of climate change but also with coal ash and pipelines, are in our most vulnerable communities,” Carroll Foy said to the audience. 

Harrison Wallace, Va. director of the Climate Action Network, address the crowd during the Clean Energy Rally. Photo by Jeffrey Knight.

Dominion is Virginia’s main energy supplier, with 2.6 million customers in Virginia and Eastern North Carolina, according to its website. The energy giant has been moving away from coal production, but environmental advocates worry that closure of Dominion’s coal ash ponds will affect nearby communities. They want Dominion to haul away the coal ash, instead of capping it in place.

Advocates also said that the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline that Dominion and other utility companies want to build as they tap into alternative energy sources will compromise communities and deviate from a zero carbon future.

“There will be 35 years of non-renewable energy if the pipeline continues,” said Corrina Beall, legislative and political director of the Sierra Club Virginia Chapter. 

The Environmental Justice Act (HB 704 and SB 406) patroned by Del. Mark Keam, D-Fairfax, and Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Richmond, respectively, would require state agencies to review proposed environmental policies with regard to the impact on low income communities, communities of color and vulnerable populations and calls for “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people.”

The Clean Energy Rally brought hundreds to advocate for zero carbon emissions as well as other environmental legislation. Photo by Jeffrey Knight.

Supporters at the rally also pushed for the Fair Energy Bills Act (HB 1132), patroned by Del. Jerrauld “Jay” Jones, D-Norfolk, and Del. Lee Ware, R-Powhatan. The bill calls for lower rates from energy suppliers like Dominion Energy, who reportedly overcharged Virginians $277 million more than they were allowed in 2018. 

SB 966 restored the SCC’s ability to conduct earnings reviews to determine whether Dominion Energy had collected more money than required. If so, the extra revenue could be reinvested in electric distribution grid transformation as well as solar and offshore wind projects, at no extra cost to the consumer. 

“What makes more financial sense is for the money to be reinvested, which allows the customer to get the benefit of the project without any additional rates,” said Rayhan Daudani, manager of media relations for Dominion Energy. 

He said that customers get a “great value” with rates 6.8 percent below the national average, along with increased investment in renewable energy and a transformed energy grid. Dominion said it plans to invest $750 million between offshore wind projects and smart meters that provide better grid service. 

“Our mission is to keep those prices low, build the nation’s largest offshore wind project, continue to provide solar energy across the state, and keep the lights on for our customers,” Daudani said.

Supporters of clean energy gather on the Capitol steps. Photo by Adrienne Eichner.

The offshore wind project is set to be the largest in the U.S., with enough energy to power up to 650,000 Virginia homes, according to a recent Dominion Energy press release. 

So far none of the bills supported by clean energy advocates have passed committee.

Written by Jeffrey Knight, Capital News Service. Top Photo by Adrienne Eichner.

Occupation: Appalachia

Madelyne Ashworth | August 6, 2018

Topics: ACP, Appalachia, Appalachian Voices, Bent Mountain, Bold Alliance, Dakota Access Pipeline, Dominion, environment, EQT Midstream Partners, FERC, Franklin County, Governor Northam, Jefferson National Forest, landowners, MVP, Pipeline, pipeline protests, Sierra Club, Southern Environmental Law Center, Standing Rock Indian Reservation, Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, Virginia Public Access Project

“I miss my house. I really would not have traded it for a piece of plywood if this were not important,” shouted Red Terry, high above her property in a tree-sit on Bent Mountain this past April. Theresa “Red” Terry lives in an “active crime scene,” according to law enforcement.

Along with other activists, she and her daughter, Minor Terry, are seeking to prevent construction of a 300-mile long, 42-inch wide natural gas pipeline that would cut through Jefferson National Forest. They took to the trees after an ongoing four-year legal battle that climaxed this January when a federal judge ruled in favor of Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC, clearing the way for pipeline construction.

This article originally appeared in RVA #33 Summer 2018, you can check out the issue here, or pick it up around Richmond now. 

“Most people [the pipeline] was affecting have been busy doing lawful things for three years, and it’s gotten them nowhere,” Red said. “When they gave the permission to cut on my property, that’s when I decided to go up [the tree]. It’s gotten attention a lot faster than doing things the right way.”

Landowners occupy shelters in the trees above their land in protest of the Mountain Valley Pipeline proposed for construction in Franklin County, Virginia.

Red and Minor were found in contempt of court for their protest, and have been charged with three misdemeanors, including impeding work and trespassing. Living on separate tree platforms in two different locations, they are both near the creek that runs through their property. The pipeline company claims their protest halted tree cutting, but the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality has forbidden MVP to cut trees within 75 feet of any waterway for the season due to the spawning season of the Roanoke logperch, a federally-designated endangered species.

“If I weren’t here, they would cut anyway,” Minor said. She’s the seventh-generation landowner on the Terry property. Both state police and Global Security, a private firm hired by MVP, share a tent while camping outside the tree sits. The women are issued state-provided food, which includes two bologna sandwiches, a bag of apple juice, water, and two cookies–food described as meeting all their ‘nutritional needs.’

The protests gave MVP grounds to request an extension to DEQ’s original tree cutting deadline of March 31 to May 31, which DEQ and other federal agencies granted. Originally, this deadline was set to protect bat and migratory bird habitats.

“The path that this pipeline will be going through, the terrain is unreal,” Minor said. “It’s steep slopes, mountainsides, waterways, creeks and streams, and wetlands. And some of these slopes are too steep to even stand on, and they want to bring in machinery and blast through it and bury a giant pipeline.”

According to Dr. Hearst Kastning, a karst landscape expert, pipeline leaks are likely to occur due to the high degree of seismic activity in this region of Appalachia. Landslides are also common here, and Kastning says they’re likely to increase when the trees preventing erosion are removed.

“Karst, in general, is one of the most sensitive landscapes in the environment. In a karst landscape, there are a lot of fractures and openings,” Kastning said. “Caves allow a lot of water to go through, fast, and unfiltered. Because of that, if the pipeline goes over karst, there are no guarantees it will be alright because we don’t know where it will redirect the water… Once operational, if it springs a leak or breaks, that would contaminate the groundwater for quite a distance.”

On Carolyn Reilly’s property, a working farm in Franklin County, an anonymous group has taken to the trees to protect her land. Reilly, a longtime pipeline fighter, faces contempt of court charges for allowing them to remain.

“We call ourselves grass farmers,” Reilly said about her property, where she’s trying to improve soil quality through traditional agricultural practices. She contrasted that with MVP, describing them as “extractive, and all about claiming space.” She said MVP is “working it to death and then moving on. That doesn’t honor life at all.”

The Reillys and the Terrys have been fighting the MVP for the past three and a half years, engaging in government meetings, community forums, and an endless string of lawsuits. Both families are part of individual lawsuits against FERC and state agencies, as well as group lawsuits through organizations like Bold Alliance, the Sierra Club, and the Southern Environmental Law Center. The process is long and messy.

“Bringing these appeals is a relatively recent development,” said Carolyn Elefant, the pipeline lawyer for Bold Alliance. “There had always been a handful of challenges to certificates over the last 20 years, but generally parties didn’t have resources, or they just gave in to the project. It’s really only been in the past five years these cases have started to go forward.”

Many of these lawsuits have no precedent, making for a new legal environment. The process for companies is becoming more tedious since, in addition to receiving a certificate from FERC, the section 401 water quality test from the State Water Control Board, and approval from the Forest Service, they are being met with lawsuits from almost every impacted landowner.

While this may be a headache for companies like EQT Midstream Partners, partners involved with MVP; or Dominion, who controls the Atlantic Coast Pipeline project; it poses more serious challenges to rural landowners who lack the resources to fight back.

Elefant said the bias favors construction, since, “when a court looks at the decision, it presumes that the agency ruling is correct, and it tends to defer to many of the factual determinations that the agency made.” Even when alternate routes are proposed, she said, “the court is going to assume that FERC’s decision was probably right based on its expertise.”

In 2016, protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation highlighted the power that corporations wield in these interactions. While the MVP does not disrupt Native American land, the proposed pipeline will cause irreparable damage to woodlands and historic farmlands, in an area as sparsely populated as Standing Rock.

“They had no right to come through here and pick land they knew they wouldn’t get much fight from,” Red Terry said. “Older people, retiring people. We’ve had this land pretty much natural for seven generations, and we want to keep it that way.”

Energy companies have continually targeted populations that lack widespread social power. They are small, agrarian communities that feel ignored by their political representatives and lack the resources to stop a project headed by large corporations, many of which donate to Virginia’s political parties. According to the Virginia Public Access Project, Governor Northam has accepted over $199,251 from Dominion alone, something that critics say suggests government bias.

“DEQ has a history of aligning with industry over the public interest, and that was no more clear than in the agency’s industry-friendly handling of the Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley pipeline permits in 2017,” Peter Anderson, Virginia Program Manager with Appalachian Voices, said in a statement. Last year, former Governor McAuliffe signed a $58 million mitigation plan with Dominion, releasing them from any potential damages to Virginia’s forests by the ACP, while Governor Northam remains passive toward pipeline questions, and publicly reprimanded Red Terry for her protest.

Elefant predicts these cases will go to the Supreme Court. In addition to the constitutionality of a private corporation using eminent domain, several other new legal issues are introduced, such as the environmental impact inflicted by this project.

“This has been happening for generations,” Reilly said. “This whole country was founded on taking what belongs to other people. I feel like this is corporate colonization happening.”

In May, the Terrys had their court dates, almost a month after Red and Minor took to the trees.

“I don’t understand how industry can look at these plans, look at whatever information that’s been given to them, and thought this was a good idea,” Minor said. “They thought this was going to be safe, that the damage would be minimal. I’m angry. I’m so angry.”

The tree-sitters believe the lengths they have gone to protect the land are absolutely necessary. They have endured rain, high winds, freezing temperatures, snow, heat, constant interrogation, police surveillance, and really bad bologna sandwiches.

“We need to be clear with ourselves that this structure of law enforcement is to serve this company over the power of the people,” said a Reilly property tree-sitter, who went by the pseudonym Alex. “I know that this is a way, at least for a time, to stop the construction. They’re getting scared now.”

U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Dillon found the Terrys in contempt of court and ordered them to evacuate their trees by midnight the next Saturday. If they did not comply, they would be fined $1,000 per day – fines that would be given directly to MVP, LLC. Red’s husband, Coles Terry III, was fined $2,000 for being in contempt for supporting his wife and daughter.

MVP lawyers told the judge that the delays caused by the Terrys so far have cost the pipeline more than $15,000, and that security efforts around the tree-sitting zones cost more than $25,000. MVP’s construction manager testified the alleged financial damages would grow exponentially if crews could not finish tree clearing by the May 31 deadline.

“There are more ways to fight,” Alex said. “Determined people, organized people can still do something. We have our voice, we have each other, and if we wedge those things in the right places, new possibilities can be born.”

Even after the ruling was reached, Alex and the others remained on the Reilly property until the end of May.

“If you look closely enough, if you are really present, then you can find the whole world here,” Alex said. “Defending this place is about that, but there is a global context here. This is a farm and a family that have built their livelihood here.”

Carolyn and her husband have done everything they could to protect their land and their farm from a corporate enterprise, not only affecting their lives and their children’s lives, but the entire community around them. Eminent domain has stripped them of that right, while the Reillys have to worry whether they will be able to continue farming, out of fear for their soil and waterways.

Hundreds of miles away, men in a corporate office in Pittsburgh have permanently affected the way a little girl sees the world.

“It’s totally permeated every pore of our family,” said Reilly, mother of four, who now worries for her children’s future due to legal costs imposed by the court after a guilty ruling. “She’s eight, our youngest. She’s known this since she was five. This is all she’s known. Her whole perspective is based on, ‘Are you for or against the pipeline?’ She’ll ask me, ‘That person you were just talking to, are they for or against it? What do they think about it?’ Basically, are they for us or are they not for us? Where do they stand with us?”

The Reillys, the Terrys and hundreds of other landowners continue to fight both the ACP and the MVP. Both projects continue to face considerable obstacles, such as mid-May storms, which prompted DEQ to cite environmental violations and halt construction due to severe erosion that would pollute waterways. MVP predicts the project will be complete by the fall of 2018.

READ MORE: At the end of last month, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down two important decisions that allowed the Mountain Valley Pipeline natural gas line to cut through the Jefferson National Forest this past Friday.

This Year’s RVA Environmental Film Festival to Educate and Entertain With Over 20 Films Around Town

John Donegan | February 6, 2018

Topics: Capital Region Land Conservancy, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Climate change, Enrichment Foundation, environmental issues, film, global warming, James River Film Society, RVA Environmental Film Festival, Sierra Club, The Byrd Theatre The Science Museum of Virginia., Viridiant

The 8th Annual Richmond Environmental Film Festival, which kicked off last night, has come around once again for its week-long showcase to raise awareness on environmental issues featuring local and national films at various venues across the city.  

Every year, the festival bolsters its lineup with an arsenal of films, providing breathtaking, in-depth examinations of the obstacles our environment faces, along with guest speakers, and environmentalist panels, all looking to accommodate a haven for discussion.

Founded in 2008 by the James River Film Society and revived by the Sierra Club in 2011, the festival has continued its relentless awareness outreach to the Richmond community, with presenters including the Enrichment Foundation, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Viridiant, and the Capital Region Land Conservancy.

Over 20 films have been selected for this year’s screenings including films on the Flint water crisis, to “Awake: A Dream From Standing Rock,” that captures the Sioux tribe’s peaceful protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, and “Jane,” a deep look inside the life of activist and conservationist Jane Goodall and her extensive work and interactions with chimpanzees. The film draws from never before seen footage from National Geographic archives a by Philip Glass. The film will be a double feature for the festival, first showing at the VCU Commons Theater at 3:30 pm on Tues., Feb. 6, and 4:45 pm on Sun., Feb. 11 at the Byrd Theater.  

 

Films will be screened all across Richmond venues including the University of Richmond Ukrop Auditorium, VCU Student Commons Theater, VCU Grace Street Theater, WCVE Studios, Chesterfield public libraries, The Visual Arts Center, The Byrd Theatre, and The Science Museum of Virginia.

On Sunday, the RVA Environmental Film Festival Committee will announce the winners of the Virginia Environmental Film awards and screen their films at The Byrd Theatre at 3:05 PM.

The film festival will run until Sun. Feb. 18, you can see the full rundown of films, times, speakers and places here. 

 

 

 

Texas Beach clean up event hopes to remove trash from one of our favorite places to get trashed

James Miessler | July 7, 2016

Topics: Sierra Club, Texas Beach, Texas Beach Bloody Mary Mix

Texas Beach, a popular James River spot frequented and beloved by Richmonders for… any number of reasons… is getting its annual cleanup this Saturday, and there’s still time for you to pitch in and volunteer.

Organized by the Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club and Clean Sweep RVA, this year’s Texas Beach cleanup has already garnered an overwhelming amount of support from the local community, with folks like Texas Beach Bloody Mary Mix helping out with supplies and labor.

“Sometimes you hit the right time, and people are looking for something to do and it just catches on like wildfire,” said Amy Robins, co-founder of RVA Clean Sweep, a local volunteer cleanup group. “It doesn’t always happen that way, but it’s awesome when people have this much excitement about making sure that their green space is clean.”

The excitement is so great, in fact, that Texas Beach can’t even handle the amount of people who have volunteered. That just means they’ll be directed to clean up other areas in need.
“The reality is that Texas Beach can’t handle 300 volunteers,” Robins said. “There’s not enough space, there’s not enough trash. We’re not discouraging anyone from coming to this cleanup, but we’re gonna have an overflow site, so that once we know we’ve already saturated the Texas Beach area, we’re gonna send people out to a second point, and help them clean up the Randolph area, and move into Byrd Park.”

Even though there is an effort being made to clean up Texas Beach, there is also a conscious effort on behalf of Beach goers to keep it clean, according to Austin Green, a founding member of the Texas Beach Bloody Mary Mix, which gets its name from the treasured spot.

“I don’t think that it’s all people organizing events that are doing this,” Green said. “There are definitely citizens who take it upon themselves to pick up after others, even in their daily trips to the river, and we’re always appreciative of that.”

While the Sierra Club organizes local events like this Texas Beach cleanup, it is primarily an advocacy group, working to advance policies that reduce pollution and expand the use of clean energy. They have recently been fighting for a strong implementation of the Clean Power Plan, which would introduce for the first time limits on carbon emissions produced by power plants.

“Next Saturday, we are picking up trash, which is just one type of pollution,” said Ben Weiner, Communications Assistant for the Virginia Sierra Club. “Every day the club is fighting pollution in the air we breathe and water we drink – we’re trying to pick up that trash, too.”

Check out the event on Facebook here.

Editors notes: While I don’t think we can legally advocate or condone drinking at Texas Beach, we can tell people it is a massive dick move to bring glass to the river so whatever you chose to consume, keep it in cans or plastic!

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