We will have more information in the days to come, and we hope that everyone will watch for Paul Lagasse’s upcoming article on this development in the Maryland Independent, but there’s big news that we want to share with you right away.
Dominion sent out a press release this morning. It reads:

“Dominion Energy will not construct a natural gas transmission compressor station at its Charles County Marshall Hall site. We will continue our existing operations at that site, which consist of a field office, a warehouse, and pipeline inspection and safety-related equipment.
We are actively evaluating alternatives for this component of our Eastern Market Access project. This requires the engagement of multiple stakeholders, as successful solutions must meet the needs of the project’s customers. Discussions with customers are ongoing.”

We must warn you that it’s not court-official yet, but we’re keeping our eye on the Maryland Federal District Court docket for the case in which Dominion sued Charles County to make sure that this part of the deal gets sealed.

The AMP Creeks Council – together with We Are Cove Point, SEED, Community of Communities, Maryland Environmental Health Network, and others – will continue to fight this project wherever it rears its ugly head, but today we’re celebrating, and we hope you will too. Thank you to the great many people who worked so hard to get us this far. It is an astonishing victory.

The Denial is Saved

Despite FERC Approval, We're Still Fighting!

Another Victory! Next Steps in the Compressor Station Fight. In the political equivalent of the last game in the playoffs, we won! The Board of Appeals kept us on the edge of our seats until the very end, but they voted 3-1 to maintain their denial of Dominion’s special exception zoning permit application. Ms. Greene, […]

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7th (final?) hearing!

Despite FERC Approval, We're Still Fighting!

The next Board of Appeals hearing will be on March 13 from 7:00 – 10:15pm in the Charles County Government Building at 200 Baltimore St., La Plata, MD. Last night (February 13), the Board heard summations from both the AMP Creeks Council’s and Dominion’s lawyers, and then deliberated in open session. It was an intense […]

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9/21/18, 8:30 p.m. — did you hear or smell it?

After reports of huge equipment going onsite at the proposed site for Dominion’s new compressor station on New Marshall Hall / Barry’s Hill Rd. this evening, and recent digging near the pipes there, we went over to investigate what is going on.

We spoke to workers onsite who said they were preparing to do a blowdown — that the equipment was to capture gas evacuated from one pipeline and put it into the parallel/looped pipeline. When we got there, the site smelled so strongly of gas that it made us nauseous and dizzy. As this email was being typed, the blowdown began — a roaring sound as heard from several area homes.

Asked if this was a routine blowdown, the workers told us that Dominion was cutting into the pipe to add something to it. (The workers were contractors.) We’ll send more when we know it. In the meantime, please let us know what you heard or smelled.

The event was likely related to a temporary shutdown of operations at Cove Point.

Thank you to everyone for staying vigilant and keeping eyes on the site.

Defend the Decision — May 22, 2018

This community is amazing! About forty people showed up at Tuesday night’s Board of Appeals hearing on about ten minutes notice, and it made a clear impression. We need you back on the 22nd!

The Board of Appeals decided to dedicate their next meeting to a work session specifically to consider whether or not to consider Dominion’s Motion for Reconsideration. We know how confusing that is! Under Board rules, Dominion has the right to ask for a reconsideration of the Board’s decision. However, the Board doesn’t automatically grant their wish. They need a vote of three to even hear Dominion’s case. If they decide to hear Dominion’s case, some form of the hearing process will open back up. If not, the door closes on administrative remedies, and the next step is for Dominion to sue them.

The Board also voted to suspend its decision (denial of the permit) for 30 days. Although we wish that they hadn’t suspended it at all, putting a cap on the suspension is a good thing.

In the meantime, AMP Creeks will brief the case by May 16. That way, even if our lawyer is not allowed to speak on the 22nd, the Board will have our arguments in writing.

Background:

Dominion has requested a rehearing before the Charles County Board of Appeals. They are the body that denied Dominion’s zoning special exception permit.

Although we often called to check on the status of the Board’s decision, we were never told in a phone call, nor did we receive written notice, that the Board’s decision was published on on April 13, 2018. We only found out because of Dominion’s filing.

We also found in that Motion for Reconsideration that on March 26, Dominion filed a federal lawsuit against Charles County, the Charles County Commissioners, and the Charles County Board of Appeals “specifically to confirm the scope of preemption in this matter”. It is extremely frustrating to us that various agencies and their consulting lawyers seem dead set on preempting themselves. Preemption is not automatic. (Thus Dominion’s harassing court case.)

Speaking of things we recently learned, the MDE is watching us. It’s probably easier than monitoring Dominion directly. Hello, Karen, Bobbie, Shannon, Bill, Marcie, and Angelo!

As you can imagine, those of us on the AMP Creeks legal team are not getting a lot of sleep these days, but we are getting a lot done.

For now, please put this event on your calendar, share, and invite your friends and family. We need to keep showing up so that the Board and Dominion know we’re still here.

Tuesday, May 22 – Defend the Decision 2
7:00pm
Charles County Government Building
200 Baltimore St., La Plata, MD

Unfortunately, the fight against the compressor station is not over yet. The Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) has interpreted the law in a way that allows them to override our recent zoning decision victory. Of course AMP Creeks will fight that interpretation, but while that battle moves forward, if MDE does decide to approve the project, construction will mostly likely begin this summer. Even before the Charles County zoning decision, the MDE had issued a draft air permit for the station.

We need your help to make sure this draft decision doesn’t become final. Convincing MDE to deny the air permit is critical because the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) cannot override (preempt) MDE if they deny the permit.

The MDE held a public hearing on Wednesday, March 28 at 6:30pm at the Bryans Road Volunteer Fire Department. Residents packed the meeting and delivered inspiring testimony opposing the compressor station for four solid hours. It was really encouraging because this is our best shot at stopping the project.

The public comment period is open until June 12. Please submit written testimony to MDE explaining why you believe that the air pollution that Charles Station would produce is unacceptable and should not be permitted. Here’s information about how to submit your written testimony. You can use the talking points below to help you if you’re not sure what to say. If you would like to be added to our email list so that you get updates about this project, please email Kelly at kelly@ampcreeks.org to sign up.

Here are some talking points that you can use as you work on your oral or written testimony:

MDE should not be rushing to approve this application. Only four days after they received Dominion’s most recent supplemental information, they released their tentative determination of approval. They should have taken more time to consider the material, and give deference to the decision made by the local zoning authority (the Charles County Board of Appeals). For MDE to give tentative determination so quickly after highly questionable and technical supplemental data was submitted by Dominion is a red flag.
MDE should provide an opportunity for cross examination of witnesses. Dominion has submitted two contradictory air modeling statements. We need an opportunity to cross examine their expert witnesses. This is the best way to learn the truth about the inconsistencies in their application.
Dominion’s proposed compressor station would emit many harmful air pollutants, including nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, particulate matter, and formaldehyde (which is considered a hazardous air pollutant by EPA). These air pollutants are associated with health impacts ranging from respiratory illnesses to cardiovascular effects, birth defects, cancer, etc.
Air pollution from compressor stations include huge spikes of pollution during “blowdowns” when the station is depressurized and air pollutants are shot out of the station at great speeds and in great quantities. Dominion estimates that these events, which include start-ups and shut-downs of the plant, would occur on about one third of the days in each year, plus unplanned emergency blowdowns. During those times we would be exposed to extremely high spikes of pollution that can cause acute health effects.
The air permit application and draft permit do not include the blowdown emissions in the estimated emissions, so we have no way of measuring whether Dominion will be in compliance with federal air limits during blowdowns, which will be frequent.
The air application and draft permit do not include estimates for unregulated “fugitive emissions.” These are leaks from connectors that are common at LNG facilities. They are often substantial, and may go unnoticed if the gas isn’t odorized. Dominion is given thirty days to fix leaks, meaning we could routinely be exposed to emissions that exceed federal air limits for as long as a month due to leaks. In the Cove Point case, Dominion argued that they couldn’t monitor their fugitive emissions, and that they shouldn’t have to.
The air pollution in our community would be worse than for many other communities near compressor stations because this would be a particularly large compressor station (larger than all compressor stations in New York, for example), the station would be located in a geographic depression where pollution can collect, and the smoke stack height was lowered from 83 feet to 50 feet.
Dominion’s lowered, proposed stack height of 50 feet is the same height as the proposed compressor building. When smoke stacks are not sufficiently taller than the buildings that surround them, air pollutants tend to get trapped in recirculating paths downwind of the buildings, in a phenomenon called “downwash.” Downwash leads to greater pollution levels near the ground level, downwind of the smoke stacks. In order to prevent downwash, EPA has created rules that tell companies how tall their stack heights have to be to avoid this phenomenon. The EPA formula is that the stacks should be 2.5 times the building height – something called the “good engineering practice” stack height. According to this formula, Dominion’s stack height should be 125 feet. Dominion’s stack height is 75 feet lower than the recommended height, which means the downwash increase in ground level pollution will be severe. Dominion also did not release its electronic air modeling files, so we do not know how the downwash affects the air modeling and anticipated emissions.
MDE is not necessarily capturing the worst case scenario for this project, which is especially problematic given how close to the legal limit for some air pollutants they are. Regional/multi-source modeling should have been done instead of using background averages based on ambient air monitoring data from across the river in Arlington, Virginia, more than 13 miles from the proposed compressor station site.
Estimates show that the compressor station could emit an illegally high nitrogen dioxide (NO2) level. 188 is the one hour NO2 acceptable standard. In their original application, Dominion reported their predicted NO2 concentration would be 177. In their recently submitted supplemental information, they changed it to 129. It is unclear why those numbers are so different since the project has not changed. In MDE’s tentative approval of the project, they estimate the number at 181.5. Modeling uncertainty is +/- 30%.
The EPA has required that the NO2 levels not be exceeded for purposes of public health. People with existing health problems (such as asthma and respiratory illnesses), would be in a lot of trouble. Some studies already question the sufficiency of the standards. If you or a family member has pre-existing health problems, please raise them in your testimony. You would be hit extra hard by this pollution.
MDE should conduct a health impact assessment to determine the predicted health impacts for the local population.
This region is not in compliance with the federal ozone standards, and this project would make the air pollution and related health problems worse.
The project would result in approximately 5.9 million metric tons of CO2e emissions per year from end-use combustion. This is equivalent to the annual emissions of over 1.2 million cars, and is greater than the annual emissions of a major coal-fired power plant.
Emissions per year of just four kinds of air pollutants would equal that emitted by 887 idling tractor trailers, 41 tractor trailers worth of nitrogen oxide (NOx), 53 tractor trailers worth of volatile organic compounds (VOC), 132 tractor trailers worth of carbon monoxide (CO), and 661 tractor trailers worth of ambient particulate air pollution (PM2.5).
Cumulative impacts of multiple pollutants can be severe, but are being ignored. Health impacts are considered on a one-by-one pollutant basis. Dominion and MDE fail to assess the additive impacts of exposure to multiple pollutants (e.g., PM2.5, ozone, NO2) on the health of sensitive individuals including the very young, the elderly, pregnant women, and those with pre-existing conditions. The standards also do not look at the potential synergistic effects of different pollutants.

Appeal of Maryland Public Service Commission’s ORDER No. 86372 granting a Certificate of Public Convenience And Necessity to Dominion Cove Point, LNG LP

In February 2015 we filed and appeal of Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Nance’s...