Virginia Air Board grants permit for controversial fracked-gas compressor station

RICHMOND, Virginia – Today, the Virginia State Air Pollution Control Board voted 4-0 to grant a permit to Dominion Energy for the Buckingham Compressor Station, a 54,000 horsepower industrial facility proposed for the historic Union Hill community in Buckingham County. The facility will pump fracked-gas through Dominion’s controversial Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

This compressor station will be built in Union Hill, a historically Black community, and would run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every week of the year. Those living near the compressor station would be exposed to dangerous levels of noise pollution, and during blowdowns, exhaust events than can take place as often as once a day, the noise level of which will be comparable to a jet engine taking off.

This vote was deferred from an originally scheduled date of November 9. Days after that deferral, Gov. Ralph Northam unexpectedly and controversially dismissed two members of the Board who had raised environmental justice concerns and asked questions about the facility’s environmental and health implications. After immense public pressure, the two new members of the board did not vote in further decisions on this permit. At a previous meeting on December 19, the Board again delayed the vote, requesting an additional public comment period, which was announced on the Friday before Christmas by the Department of Environmental Quality to last a brief 14 days and take place over Christmas and New Years.

Today's decision runs in the face of momentum continuing to grow against the Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley pipeline projects, including Virginia suing Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC for repeated violations of laws that keep our water clean, and Atlantic Coast Pipeline, LLC notifying the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission it is stopping all work along its 600-mile route after losing its permit needed to cut through national forests, and its permit needed to build through streams and waterways.

In response, Kate Addleson, Director of the Sierra Club Virginia Chapter, released the following statement

"The Board has betrayed the principles it laid out in November to carefully consider the full effects and environmental justice impacts of this compressor station and further projects, while ignoring the comments and concerns of thousands of Virginians, by approving this permit.

Gov. Northam’s interference in the State Air Pollution Control Board, followed by a heavily obfuscated comment period, was clearly designed to grease the skids for today’s result and punish those who stand up to Dominion's dirty politics and power.

The residents of Buckingham, and all those from across the commonwealth who have come together to call out the injustice of the siting of this compressor station, have made it clear that Virginians will not tolerate environmental injustices that further systemic oppression. Community members, leaders and environmentalists have fought side-by-side for years to stop the dirty and destructive Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley pipeline projects, and will not rest until these projects are defeated."

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