Category: Environment
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Another Warning of Sea-Level Rise
By 2030, $838 million worth of residential property in Virginia is at risk of being chronically inundated by high tides caused by rising sea levels, directly affecting more than 6,000 people and $8 million in property taxes, according to a new report by the Union for Concerned Scientists. The definition of “chronic” inundation is 26…
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Grasses, Fisheries Drive Health Gains for the Bay
More good news about the Chesapeake Bay. While still plagued with problems, the Bay’s ecological health continues to improve, reports the 2017 Chesapeake Bay Report Card. Last year stood out for the spread of aquatic grasses and the highest-ever Fisheries Index. The biggest gains were found in the James River, the Elizabeth River and the Upper…
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Solar Farms and Rural Blight
Governor Ralph Northam is committed to solar energy in Virginia. So is the General Assembly. So are Virginia environmentalists, investor-owned utilities and entrepreneurial solar developers. Now all we have to do is convince the people of rural Virginia that installing massive arrays of solar panels in their neighborhoods poses no threat to their quality of…
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Snakeheads vs Blue Catfish: Fear the Cats
by D.J. Rippert Undocumented swimmers. The Chesapeake Bay Watershed has more than its fair share of non-native species. Mute swans escaped from an estate on the Eastern Shore where they had been imported from Eurasia. Today they are the largest birds in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. Nutria were introduced to a nature preserve in 1943 in the…
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Visual Impacts and Transmission Lines
Last week the U.S District Court for the District of Columbia rejected a last-ditch appeal by the National Parks Conservation Association and allied groups to block construction of the controversial high-voltage transmission line across the James River near Jamestown. Dominion Energy Virginia had embarked upon preliminary construction in February after winning a U.S. Army Corps…
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“Malicious Yet Delicious”
Thanks to a bill signed by Governor Ralph Northam signed a law last week, it will be legal come July to sell snakehead fish, an invasive species that is spreading fast in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Legislation swam through the General Assembly this year despite concerns by some that commercializing the Asian invader…
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Virginia’s Date with RGGI
There’s a good chance that Virginia will participate in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) to cut utility CO2 emissions. The impact of the cap-and-trade system would be mostly symbolic. Barring litigation, Virginia could start participating later this year in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI, pronounced Reggie), a cap-and-trade program designed to reduce CO2…
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The Logperch Veto
Virginia has its very own snail darter — the Roanoke logperch, a threatened species of fish, the existence of which could delay or even obstruct a multibillion-dollar infrastructure project. The snail darter became a cause celebre for endangered species in 1973 when concerns arose that the habitat of the endangered fish would be obliterated by…
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Pipeline Runs Afoul of Endangered Species
Atlantic Coast Pipeline foes won a significant legal victory yesterday when the Richmond-based U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated a Fish and Wildlife Service Review of pipeline construction. Limits set by the federal agency for the protection of endangered species were “so indeterminate” that they rendered enforcement of the Endangered Species Act meaningless. “This puts…
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Russian Trolls, Gas Pipelines, and Double Standards
Finally, an outlet of the mainstream media has caught on to an issue pushed for months by conservative blogs and websites: the fact that the Russians are working to thwart the construction of natural gas pipelines in the United States. The D.C bureau of the McClatchy newspaper chain published last week an article highlighting the…
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Emerging Lines of Conflict in Virginia Energy Policy
The General Assembly may have ushered Virginia’s energy sector into a new era with its passage of the Grid Transformation and Security Act of 2018, but the battle over energy policy is far from finished. It’s just entering a new phase under new ground rules. New battlefronts are emerging over energy efficiency and onshore wind…
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Good Idea: Set Priorities for Land Conservation
Through tax credits for easements, land acquisitions for parks, and other means, the Commonwealth spends millions of dollars every year to conserve land. Under a new policy adopted by the Northam administration, the state will focus resources on safeguarding land with the highest conservation value. This new strategy will rely upon a “data-driven process” devised…
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Gas Pipelines in Virginia’s Reconfigured Energy Future
The furor over construction of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) and the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) continues unabated this week. News reports have highlighted legislators in Richmond joining pipeline protesters outside the state Capitol and, more colorfully, the antics of a dissident known as “Red” who has ensconced herself in a tree to block clearance of…
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The Ticks Are Coming! The Ticks Are Coming!
There are multiple levels to the debate about global warming. The foundation level involves understanding the forces driving climate change, in particular, the extent to which rising temperatures over the past century can be explained by rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and to what extent they might be attributable to other factors not yet well…
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Leveraging Offshore Gas Drilling to Build Offshore Wind
The Trump administration is opening up the East Coast of the United States to oil and gas drilling, but it’s not clear how much enthusiasm there is. A recent sale of drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico has attracted only “moderate” interest, reports the Financial Times, an indication that the oil & gas industry…