After the Federal Energy Regulatory Authority (FERC) approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline and Atlantic Coast Pipeline, Senator Tim Kaine had some interesting comments on the matter. He called the approval “very suspicious circumstances”, and added “If you do not like this decision there are other agencies that still have to weigh in,” he said. “If you are active about this, please do not stop your activism. Please let these other agencies know what you think about it.”
And recently, Senator Kaine has suggested that the permits on those two pipeline projects be reviewed again, now that FERC has a full complement of commissioners.
Governor-elect Ralph Northam apparently supports Senator Kaines idea of revisiting the FERC approval.
Northam says he supports a proposal from Senator Tim Kaine for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to reconsider its vote on the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.
I love that Senator Kaine is talking about this. Frankly, having an elected official of Senator Kaine’s visibility talking about his concerns with the approval process is something I see as helpful for the movement against the pipelines, and I’m glad he’s paying attention. His questions about tolling orders are apt, as there is a lot of funny business going on w/ the FERC approvals.
That said, Senator Kaine’s letter is not an official request for rehearing, as the second link says. Another factor here is that even if the projects got their rehearing, 4/5 of the FERC commissioners are Trump appointees, and 3/5 are Republicans. Neither factor inspires confidence that a rehearing would result in a different outcome on the MVP or ACP. The ACP is high priority for the current president, and FERC has a long history of shady behavior anyway. It evaluates pipeline projects in sections, seemingly to avoid evaluating the full impact of an entire project as a whole, and ignores the climate impact of transmission projects.
Due to the outcome of some court cases, there might be cause for hope that those factors change in the future, but I’m not terribly optimistic. So I wonder, why are Senator Kaine and Governor-elect Northam talking about FERC instead of Virginia’s own DEQ? Either elected official could simply ask the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality to either vacate their permits, or to revisit them and include a stream-by-stream water crossing evaluation. If that ask wasn’t legally binding, as I suspect it wouldn’t be, similarly, asking FERC to do a new assessment isn’t legally binding either.
I’m looking at this with a degree of hopeful skepticism. It’s helpful to have more conversation on the issue, but the FERC route has a lot of potential to mislead people. Governor-elect Northam, and Governor Terry McAuliffe have been fond of suggesting in the past that Virginia has no role to play in the approval process, which is simply false. Virginia can and should deny certification under section 401 of the clean water act. Pointing to FERC seems like it could be a political move to deflect attention away from the states responsibility to protect water quality.