VIRGINIA AIR QUALITY BOARD MEETING THIS WEEK

The Virginia Air Pollution Control Board will meet this week, December 2nd & 3rd, to consider an air quality permit for the proposed Lambert Air Compressor Station, a supporting facility for the Mountain Valley Pipeline. The Board will decide whether to accept or deny the air quality permit, sealing in the fate of the local community’s immediate health as well as those in the greater Virginia area.

With the upcoming meeting, Virginia is speaking up against the air quality permit, the air compressor station, and the pipeline in general. From legislators, to environmentalists, to healthcare workers, to concerned residents, many are urging the board to deny the permit to avoid increased air pollution such as carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and other particulate matter which leads to respiratory issues, heart, disease, cancer, and so much more.

The Virginia Conservation Network has rounded up Opinion Editorials and Letters to the Editor from the past week speaking up against the air compressor station and Mountain Valley Pipeline. We’ve pulled out some of the top lines from each article, although we encourage you to  read through as many articles as possible to understand the gravity of the Board’s decision.

MOUNTAIN VALLEY PIPELINE IS UNJUST AND OUR STATE BOARD MUST DENY NEW PERMITS

Senator Ghazala F. Hashmi, Richmond Times Dispatch

“The 303-mile fracked-gas pipeline project is environmentally unjust and dangerous, as the route rips through culturally significant Indigenous sites and brings a risk of explosion to rural communities. MVP would lock Virginia into climate emissions equal to 19 million vehicles per year — at a time when we must seek cleaner, long-term energy solutions.

Moving forward with a project as destructive as the Mountain Valley Pipeline takes our commonwealth in an unsafe, inequitable direction. We have the responsibility as public servants to consider environmental justice; to enforce regulations that protect our air, water and land; and ultimately, to honor our citizens and neighbors. The Mountain Valley Pipeline is environmentally and morally unjust, and its proposed water and air permits must both be denied.”

OPINION: ON ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, THE MOUNTAIN VALLEY PIPELINE IS AN OLD STORY

Karen Campblin and Samantha Ahdoot, Washington Post 

“It was only last year that a federal court ruled that the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board failed to consider whether a compressor station would unfairly burden a predominantly Black community. The community was Union Hill in Buckingham County, Va., and the compressor station was designed to support the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. Again, a pipeline company is proposing to build a compressor station that would pump tons of fine particulate pollution each year into a Virginia community of color. And once again, the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board is considering whether to approve that project, despite the clear dangers it represents to Virginians’ health.

We know that people of color suffer more from asthma, heart attacks and lung cancer, and we know that the fine particulate matter that the compressor station would emit would exacerbate these preexisting health conditions.

Virginia just committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector by 30 percent by 2030 and eliminating them all altogether by 2050. The Biden administration has gone further, calling for a carbon-free electricity grid by 2035. And the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that we will not be able to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius unless there are immediate and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Why should the board greenlight a project that would do just the opposite?”

SOMETHING BAD IN THE AIR FOR PIPELINE COMPONENT

Suzanne Keller, Richmond Times Dispatch

“Toxic and dangerous air pollution emitted from the compressor station would not be confined to the Banister District that Miller represents, nor would the upstream and downstream water degradation. Also, the climate impacts of mining the pipeline’s gas, transporting it and burning it are not just harming the people of Chatham — they harm all of life. In the interests of justice and public health, the air permit for the Lambert Compressor Station should be denied.”

LETTER: VA. CAN DO MORE TO PROTECT PUBLIC FROM POLLUTION

Erica Mitrano, R.N., Sun Gazette

“As a health-care worker and a woman with breast cancer in her 30s, I especially note that the air toxics released by natural-gas facilities are implicated in cancer and other diseases. No one should get poisoned so that a corporation can make money exporting dirty energy.”

A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE FROM PIPELINE COMMUNITY

Elizabeth Jones, Richmond Times Dispatch

“My home, on land that has been in my husband’s family for almost a century, stands barely half a mile from the site of the proposed compressor station. Emissions from the station would only worsen my husband’s asthma and perpetuate the harmful pattern of putting polluting facilities in communities of color.”