General News
Contentious Pipeline Station In Black Community Gets Permit. According to E&E News, “A state
board in Virginia approved a controversial plan yesterday to build a natural gas compressor station in a historic African-American community, prompting angry shouts of ‘shame’ from more than 200 opponents. The State Air Pollution Control Board voted on a key
permit for the Atlantic Coast pipeline, which would carry fracked natural gas from West Virginia into Virginia and North Carolina. The proposed site for the compressor station is in Union Hill, an unincorporated community founded by freed slaves. The community
is located in Buckingham County, about an hour’s drive west of Richmond. Opponents are concerned that exhaust from the compressor station would hurt low-income and elderly residents who live nearby. Supporters say the station will boost development. Paul Wilson,
pastor of two Baptist churches near the proposed site, said opponents will keep fighting the project. He didn’t elaborate on whether they would take legal action.” [E&E News,
1/9/19 (=)]
Lawmakers Push Bipartisan Anti-Drilling Measures. According to E&E News, “Coastal House
members are making good on their promise to push anti-offshore-drilling measures early in the new Congress. Lawmakers are filing seven bills today to prohibit offshore drilling and seismic testing in the waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico.
Some of the legislation is specific to individual states, while other measures would prevent leasing and exploration in entire regions, such as off the Eastern Seaboard. The suite of legislation is designed to block the Trump administration’s five-year leasing
plan, which proposes opening up more than 90 percent of the outer continental shelf to oil and gas drilling. ‘Today’s bills are about a cleaner, more sustainable future for our country,’ said House Natural Resources Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.). ‘We can
create clean energy jobs and protect our coastlines at the same time with the right policy choices. The American people don’t want oil rigs on every beach up and down our coasts, and our economy doesn’t need them.’” [E&E News,
1/9/19 (=)]
Chad Ellwood
Research Associate
202.448.2877 ext. 119