Category: Environment
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One Environmental Calamity I’m Not Mourning
Whatever happened to bug splats on windshields? I was actually asking myself that question a couple of months ago. Now comes a Washington Post article suggesting that other people are asking the same question — and worrying about the implications. I remember taking road trips in the family station wagon — this would have been 50…
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Pipelines Clear Another Regulatory Hurdle
Another regulatory barrier to the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and Mountain Valley Pipeline has fallen. The board of trustees of the Virginia Outdoors Foundation unanimously approved Monday applications for “conversion of open space” by the two natural gas pipeline developers that propose to cross 11 VOF conservation easements. From the outset, VOF informed the pipeline companies…
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FERC Approves Atlantic Coast, Mountain Valley Pipelines
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) and Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) in rulings issued Friday. The three-person commission was divided on the issue of granting the pipelines a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity, with two commission members appointed by President Trump ruling in favor while an Obama administration…
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Trump Nixes Clean Power Plan, Gas and Solar Still Rule
President Trump has never hidden his dislike of his predecessor’s Clean Power Plan, which would have required the 50 states to order their electric utilities to curtail carbon dioxide emissions in the cause of combating global warming. Nine months into the Trump administration, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt finally has announced formal steps…
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Electric Coops Vet Community Solar Plan
Subscribers to a community solar program in the works by five Virginia electrical cooperatives would pay a rate premium of 42% to 45% to use clean, renewable energy, according to data released by the electric coops. The five rural cooperatives, who may be joined by others in a State Corporation Commission (SCC) filing late October…
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Dominion Touts Economic Benefits of Pumped-Storage Project
A proposed pumped hydroelectric storage power station in Southwest Virginia would bring more than $576 million in economic benefits to the Commonwealth, including $320 million in economic impact for Southwest Virginia, according to a study prepared by Richmond-based Chmura Economics & Analytics and commissioned by Dominion Energy. The hydroelectric project, proposed by Dominion Energy, would…
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Consumer Group Calls for Scrapping North Anna 3
Dominion Energy may have declared a “pause” in the development of a third nuclear unit at its North Anna Power Station, but a consumer advocacy group says that’s not good enough. It’s time to shut down the project permanently. “Dominion needs to kill North Anna to protect rate payers,” said Irene Leech,…
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The Long, Painful Slog to Resolving the Net Metering Debate
After a two-hour telephone discussion Thursday, participants in a “net metering” sub-group of the Solar Policy Collaborative Workgroup didn’t seem to agree on much other than which issues need to be resolved. But that represented progress of a sort toward promoting small-scale, distributed solar energy in Virginia by businesses, homeowners and nonprofits. “These are very…
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Bacon Bits: The Latest in Government Ineptitude and Short-Sighted Thinking
It’s Hard to Teach without Teachers. With a week to go before the start of the new school year, the Richmond Public Schools still has about 90 teacher openings, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Why the shortage, which seems to be a chronic issue? Perhaps the school conditions are so terrible that no one wants…
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Do Utilities and Coal Companies Run Virginia? Hardly.
Vivian Thomson argues that utilities and coal companies dominate Virginia’s energy policy. Her simplistic view ignores the reality that environmentalists wield significant power now. Vivian E. Thomson has a big beef with state government. The University of Virginia environmental sciences professor contends that the political system in the Old Dominion is rigged in favor of…
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Pipelines and “Environmental Justice”
As I was perusing the federal court ruling on the Sierra Club vs. FERC lawsuit (see previous post), I encountered a realm of administrative law with which I was entirely unfamiliar: environmental justice. I’d heard of the concept, of course; I just didn’t realize that it had insinuated itself into environmental impact statements (EISs) for…
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Show Me the Data
I’ve been pondering Vivian E. Thomson’s book, “Climate of Capitulation: An Insider’s Account of State Power in a Coal Nation.” Thomson, a University of Virginia professor who served on the State Air Pollution Control Board during the Warner and Kaine administrations, stresses the high cost of air pollution in human health and mortality. Her treatise…
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Rogue Board
In “Climate of Capitulation,” former Air Board member Vivian Thomson argues unpersuasively that state government favors energy over the environment. In 2005 Mirant Corporation operated a 482-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Alexandria. The facility was 60 years old, and it was dirty, emitting almost twice the allowed limits of nitrogen oxide (NOx). Due to its…
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The Shamanistic Logic of Climate Science
I’ve been mixing it up with Lowell Feld, publisher of Blue Virginia, who took exception to my argument that the debacle in Charlottesville represented a clash between the far Right and far Left. He accused me of “moral equivalency,” which is absurd, for I have thoroughly denounced the white nationalists who provoked the confrontation and…
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Does “Ooker” Estridge Know Something the Experts Don’t?
Tangier Island, a marshy, low-lying island of about 1.2 square miles in the Chesapeake Bay, would seem to be Virginia’s poster child for sea-level rise. The island, according to Wikipedia, has lost about two-thirds of its land mass since 1850. There had been a universal belief, I thought, that the island is headed for oblivion…