I've been glad to see recent local media coverage of the controversy surrounding the Atlantic Coast Gas Pipeline. This pipeline would move natural gas, attained through hydraulic fracturing, from West Virginia though our state, south to power plants in North Carolina. “Natural gas,” or methane, is 84 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. This pipeline, along with the Mountain Valley Pipeline, cuts through private property, national parks and runs under waterways and reservoirs. Most pertinent to us is that a branch of the Atlantic Coast pipeline is planned to run under the Lake Prince and Western Branch reservoirs in Suffolk, from which our water comes.
Pipelines leak. Aside from the additional atmospheric methane from fracking which leaks at about 9% and has added greatly to the 60% increase in global atmospheric methane over past decade, the record for actual pipeline leaks is bad. Really bad. After promises to the contrary, the XL Keystone pipeline has already leaked about 210,000 gallons of oil. Last year witnessed one of the greatest releases of methane in modern history coming from the Aliso Canyon underground natural gas storage facility blowout in California. Since 1986, there have been over 7,940 incidents, 512 fatalities, 2,359 injuries and over $6.8 billion in property damages due to pipeline explosions, including recent explosions in Appomattox and Fauquier Counties, Virginia. But, we should trust Dominion Power and its subservient politicians with our drinking water, right?
Our climate-vulnerable sinking city will get no benefit from this pipeline but we will absorb the costs from clean-up to toxic flammable tap water.. By the time you are reading this, as Zack Jarjoura of the local Sierra Club informs me, the State Water Control Board may have already approved water permits for the pipelines which could potentially start construction in January.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe, has been an enthusiastic supporter of both the Atlantic Coast and shorter Mountain Valley Pipeline. The Water Control Board members, all of whom were appointed by Governor McAuliffe, have independent authority to accept or not to accept an as yet unreleased recommendation from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. Its Director, David K. Paylor, was, not coincidentally, also was appointed by McAuliffe.
Whatever decision is made behind closed doors, we will have to continue to oppose and resist this toxic project. Our city council has, due to mounting citizen objections, postponed its decision until Tuesday December 19 th. The weight of corporate money has always had more influence in our town than that of citizen demands but we should all turn out to this City Council meeting and sign up to speak. -- Since this article was published in Veer Magazine, our City Council as passed "An Ordinance to cancel the regular meeting of the Council of the City of Norfolk to be held on December 19, 2017 and to continue the matters scheduled on the council agenda to the next regularly scheduled council meeting to be held on January 9, 2018".
A related issue in our state and others is the power of the Dillon Rule. What is this? The Dillon Rule is a doctrine adopted by many states over the last century that limits local democracy and autonomy. The Dillon Rule narrowly defines the power of city and country governments, giving state governments ultimate authority over local issues. This can include things like raising minimum wages, being a sanctuary city, decriminalizing cannabis or ruling on a state project including offshore drilling, fracking, waste dumping or pipelines. Even if our City Council does the right thing in refusing to grant easements for this pipeline, it could be over-ruled in Richmond by politicians connected to Dominion Power. And most of them, including our Mayor, have been backed by Dominion.
Ultimately, if we want to effectively challenge polluting industries and their paid political representatives, we have to fight for real representative democracy and for more local autonomy. This again means supporting crowd-funded candidates and it means challenging the Dillon Rule. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is and organization that has done much to challenge the Dillon Rule in close to 200 municipalities in many states, working to pass laws that assert a right to local self-governance. We can learn from their efforts.
As the travesty of Bannon's “deconstruction of the administrative state” unfolds at the national level with Federal Departments, Agencies and public protections being cynically undermined, from Health and Human Services and Education to Consumer and Environmental Protection, we must work to increase our real representation and strengthen citizen power as much as possible. That begins locally. In a previous article, I emphasized that the long history of people's struggles and revolutions were really struggles for cooperative democracy. As the rise and consolidation of a cynical corporate mob undermining our rights and public safety makes all too evident, the struggle for real democracy cannot be separated from the defense of our own safety. As citizens, it is our water, our health, our lives and our future that are being placed at risk to enrich a few at our expense. We must come together to defend ourselves and our city from this looming danger.
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