More Environmental Justice Foolishness Aimed at Slowing Pipelines

Jim Willis
Editor & Publisher, Marcellus Drilling News (MDN)

 

Environmental justice is a cruel joke; an exploitation of the poor to advance the special interests of wealthy fractivists in opposing pipeline projects.

Here we go again. More talk from those desperate folks who irrationally hate fossil fuels, claiming the location of two pipelines in Virginia is “racist.” You didn’t know that an inert metal tube could be racist, did you?

Yeah, it’s stupid and silly and beyond words—but there you have it. Our schools are doing such a poor job of educating our citizens, they grow up to believe in wild fairy tales and declare anyone (or anything) that is not their particular skin color must be racist.

In Virginia, the Governor’s Advisory Council on Environmental Justice, is recommending to Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam that he should illegally (against federal law) rescind federal Clean Water Act permits that allow both the $6.5 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline (Dominion Energy) and $3.7 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline (EQT Midstream) from crossing the state.

The Advisory Council’s tortured thinking is that the pipeline runs through a few poor/black communities—so it must be racist. No mention of the fact that such pipelines actually benefit communities and individuals economically.

Pipelines get no credit for economically benefiting nearby communities—they only get dinged for flowing an evil fossil fuel that supposedly causes man-made global warming.

Here are excerpts from the S&P Global Platts story on this nonsense:

An advisory council to Virginia Governor Ralph Northam recommended the Democratic governor to rescind Clean Water Act certifications and not issue any more permits for the up to $6.5 billion Atlantic Coast and up to $3.7 billion Mountain Valley natural gas pipelines in order to protect minority communities along their routes.

The Advisory Council on Environmental Justice cited concerns about “racism in the siting decision” for an Atlantic Coast compressor station, potential civil and human rights violations, and other practices that endangered the largely African American community in Union Hill in Buckingham County, Virginia. The council also expressed concern over the lack of representation of Native Americans in the federal permitting processes for both pipelines. Collectively, the council said federal and state reviews have not addressed “potential impacts for vulnerable populations.”

…If Virginia did rescind the Clean Water Act permits and refused to issue new permits, the lack of authorizations could shut down the pipeline projects even though they have received federal approval. Such a move by the state would almost certainly trigger legal challenges by the pipeline developers. New York stopped the Williams-led Constitution Pipeline by denying it a Clean Water Act permit, and so far, federal appeals courts and the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission have upheld the permit denial.

Dominion Energy, one of the developers of Atlantic Coast, disagreed with the council’s recommendations…

Northam put together the Advisory Council on Environmental Justice to provide recommendations to improve the state government’s protections of low-income and minority communities, among other goals listed in an October 2017 order. Neither the governor’s office nor the advisory council responded to inquiries about the likelihood of the governor acting on the council’s recommendations.

Editor’s Note: This reveals the idiocy of the entire environmental justice concept. It is invariably exploited by the wealthy to advance their own special interests, using the poor as excuses for that purpose. Justice is simply justice. Attaching an adjective means someone is tipping the scales to pick winners and losers. That is the very definition of injustice.

As I have also opined several times already, if there were any such thing as environmental justice it would be focused on the denial of opportunity for people in places such as Wayne County, Pennsylvania, where I reside, to harvest their natural gas for the sake of appeasing the wealthy Manhattanites who represent the fractivist Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, for example.

For more great articles on natural gas development every single business day, subscribe to Marcellus Drilling News using this convenient link.

The post More Environmental Justice Foolishness Aimed at Slowing Pipelines appeared first on Natural Gas Now.

https://www.shaledirectories.com/blog/more-environmental-justice-foolishness-aimed-at-slowing-pipelines/