Virginia Reliability Project puts communities at risk
Ripping up wetlands, exposing low-income communities to pollution, and building guaranteed-to-be stranded assets. No one in their right mind would invest in a project with such grevious consequences, right?
Unfortunately, TC Energy — formerly TransCanada, the company behind the infamous Keystone XL Pipeline — disagrees. The company has a plan to bring more methane gas to our region. Really?
It’s called the “Virginia Reliability Project,” but it’s more like a “Virginia Ripoff Project,” because it’s terrible news for families and taxpayers. VRP would dig up 49 miles of a 12-inch pipeline running from Hampton Roads to central Virginia and replace it with a 24-inch pipeline, quadrupling its capacity in order to bring up to 750 million more gallons of dangerous, planet-warming methane gas flowing through Virginia every day.
Right now, regulators with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission are accepting comments on a draft environmental impact statement which plainly states that the project would exacerbate climate change. VRP would increase Virginia’s emissions by 2%, which is irreconcilable with the state’s required emissions reductions targets, including net-zero emissions by 2045.
Meanwhile, TC Energy is awaiting a decision from the Virginia Marine Resources Commission on a key water permit for VRP. The company’s application paints an alarming picture. It admits the project would cut through 4.2 miles of the Great Dismal Swamp, home to some of the most important wildlife in the mid-Atlantic region, and other protected ecosystems, including the Nansemond River, Blackwater Sandhills State Natural Area Preserve, and Blackwater River Reserve.
Many of these watersheds, which provide fish, oysters and drinking water to Indigenous Americans and historic Black waterway communities, are currently undergoing environmental rehabilitation — which the VRP would threaten with its risky horizontal drilling.
There are several state-listed endangered and threatened species in this area that the company admits will be affected: four different turtle species, the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker, and the threatened eastern black rail, which may go extinct by 2068.
All told, VRP would traverse through
131 water bodies and 130 acres of wetlands. The company admits some impacts will be long-term, especially from its tree-clearing plans, which could convert forested wetlands into scrub-shrub wetlands — a vastly different ecosystem.
It would also be a travesty for public health and social justice, putting already vulnerable communities at greater risk. By TC Energy’s own calculations, the population along the project route and near compressor stations already suffer from significantly higher health risk rates compared to the state and U.S. averages, with higher rates of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, lower life expectancy and low birth weight, exposure to particulate pollution, and more. Thirteen public schools and one hospital are within 1.5 miles or less of the route, including Hillpoint Elementary in Suffolk, just 300 feet from the pipeline’s path.
This raises enormous environmental justice concerns. Within 1 mile of the pipeline’s route, more than half the population are communities of color and nearly half the population live below the poverty line.
Virginia is legally bound to move away from gas-powered electricity thanks to the landmark Virginia Clean Economy
Act. This is not the time to build new fossil fuel infrastructure that will soon be obsolete. Instead, we should rapidly expand clean energy infrastructure by subsidizing rooftop solar panels, expanding community solar, and protecting programs by proceeds from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative that provide weatherization and energy efficiency upgrades to low-income communities. This will help clean up our air while we transition to a clean energy future.