Sierra Club Lawsuit Seeks to Block Power Plant, Atlantic Coast Pipe
In March 2015, Dominion–a huge natural gas and electric utility as well as a midstream company–announced plans to build the State of Virginia’s largest natural gas powered electric generating plant, in Greensville County, VA (see Virginia’s Largest Electric Plant to be Powered by Marcellus Gas). The $1.3 billion state-of-the-art natural gas-fired electric generating station will generate 1,600 megawatts of electricity. Dominion’s own $5 billion, 554-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline will provide cheap, abundant, clean-burning Marcellus/Utica Shale gas to power it (see Atlantic Coast Pipeline Makes Progress, FERC Timing Announced). The Virginia State Corporate Commission (SCC) approved the project in March of this year (see Virginia Approves State’s Largest NatGas-Powered Electric Plant). In June, Dominion began construction (see Dominion Begins Building Virginia’s Biggest NatGas Power Station). On Tuesday, environmental Nazis from the Sierra Club and Appalachian Mountain Advocates filed a federal lawsuit (in Virginia) to stop both the power plant and the pipeline, claiming the power plant won’t use the “best available emissions control technology” and that the pipeline will leak methane like a sieve…
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Just last week MDN warned that anti-drilling radicals running King George County, VA were contemplating a vote to ban fracking in the county (see 
Virginia doesn’t have the Marcellus/Utica under it–at least not very much. But Virginia does have another shale layer–the Taylorsville. We commented back in 2014 that the state is inching closer to allowing fracking in the Taylorsville and other potential basins (see 
In July 2015 Williams filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for the $130 million New York Bay Expansion project, which will flow Marcellus gas to 500,000 additional New York City residents by the 2017/2018 heating season (see 
Another day, another attack on natural gas by the radicals of the Sierra Club. In this case, the Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club found a retired geologist they could buy, er, a, hire to write a report slamming the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a $3.5 billion, 301-mile pipeline that will run from Wetzel County, WV to the Transco Pipeline in Pittsylvania County, VA. The pipeline is due to be built by EQT, NextEra Energy and several other partners. The geologist who sold himself out to the Sierra Club says the pipeline would run through a “karst” area–an area of sinkholes and caves–and building the pipeline could potentially damage the water aquifer in that area. Below is a news report and a copy of the sham report released by the Virginia Sierra Clubbers…
Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy (DMME) wants an independent, third-party review of proposed natural gas drilling regulations in the state. The last time such regulations was reviewed was in 2004, over a decade ago. A lot has changed since then. At that time, a group called the State Review of Oil and Natural Gas Environmental Regulations (STRONGER) performed the review. It’s only natural that the same group do the new review–so the DMME hired STRONGER to do it. And that has anti-drilling nutjobs in a tizzy. Eight radical anti-drilling groups say STRONGER has industry backing and will not be fair and impartial in their review. In other words, STRONGER won’t recommend rules so strict as to ban fracking, which is what the radicals want. Here’s the thing: STRONGER has members of Big Green groups as part of the organization–including Earthworks and Trout Unlimited. STRONGER receives funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Dept. of Energy (DOE). So how do the nutters figure STRONGER isn’t objective or unduly influenced? If anything, STRONGER is influenced toward being too cozy with Big Green causes…
