Dear Dominion,
Can we talk?
You say you want to meet with the community, get the facts out about your $3.8 billion plan to export liquefied fracked gas from Cove Point to India and Japan. But where are you?
“We tend to overcommunicate,” Bruce McKay, Dominion managing director of federal affairs, said inexplicably on WEAA-FM’s Marc Steiner radio program Nov. 11.
We would like to see this “overcommunication” in action.
On the program, McKay said: “But if there’s some people that don’t feel they’ve heard enough from us along the way, let us know. We are going through and meeting with every community group that we can.”

Dominion’s Bruce McKay asked residents to contact him if they haven’t heard enough about the project.

OK, Dominion, all you have to do is stop at any home, any gas station, any store in southern Calvert County and ask: “Do you know anything about the $3.8 billion fossil fuel plant Dominion is proposing?” The answer you will likely get is that people know next to nothing. And this is your fault, Dominion. If you have “overcommunicated” with residents, why haven’t they heard from you? Leading homeowners associations haven’t been contacted by you either.
So, Dominion, we’re letting you know. You are failing in the communication department. Calvert County residents, we’re letting you know, too. Email covepoint@dom.com to let Dominion know you are being kept in the dark.

Dominion: Please, meet as soon as possible with the residents of Lusby, who will live next door to a new 130-megawatt power plant for liquefying fracked gas, stashes of toxic chemicals, air pollutants, truckloads of equipment on their roads, heightened threat of explosions, and about 90 additional tanker ships rumbling along their coastline each year. Meet with the residents of Western Maryland, who will feel the pressure to frack the ground beneath their homes for the gas to feed your facility. Meet with the residents of Myersville in Frederick County, who do not want your compressor station, which will help take gas from all over the Marcellus Shale to Cove Point. Meet with the Maryland coastal communities that are concerned about rising seas and storm surges from the climate change your facility will exacerbate.
On a separate radio program Nov. 1 on WAMU-FM in Washington, DC, Dominion spokesman Dan Donovan said additional “boring” meetings were planned: “We’re committed to several [meetings] over the next few weeks. We’re going to have announcements exactly when they are. And we’ll tell them the facts. I think they’ll be a lot less scared when they hear the facts.”
When are these meetings?
Cove Point residents are increasingly frustrated by Dominion’s silence. They have filled two Calvert County Commission meetings about the planned facility, only to have their voices ignored. At one meeting, commissioners voted to exempt Dominion from local zoning regulations; at another they voted for a generous tax break that Dominion said was necessary to make the project economically viable.
These votes are leading residents to conclude that commissioners are orchestrating a fast-track approval for Cove Point. In October, commissioners even sent out a news release saying they were “pleased to announce the unveiling of a new website to help local businesses participate in the proposed major expansion of the Dominion Cove Point LNG facility in Lusby.” Dominion seems to have found an excellent PR partner in the county commissioners.
At its glitzy website, Dominion includes a Community Outreach section, but few details are offered. Meetings with contractors and unions will start in January, and meetings with local community boards will be held semiannually, according to the website. Road widening and other infrastructure is scheduled for the spring. The community would appreciate a meeting long before shovels are anticipated to be in the ground.
Mike Tidwell, director of Chesapeake Climate Action Network, has asked Dominion to debate this project with him. In a Nov. 4 letter to Dominion President and CEO Thomas Farrell Tidwell wrote: “Marylanders deserve to hear the facts from both sides of the debate in a public and transparent forum. Which is why I would like to personally invite you — or a Dominion official of your choosing — to travel to Maryland to share and support your views in such a debate with me, under debate rules of your choosing.” He asked for a reply within the week because of the seriousness of the matter. He has heard nothing.

On Baltimore’s Marc Steiner radio program, Dominion said it doesn’t want to debate the Cove Point LNG export project.

That debate could have happened on Marc Steiner’s program, where Tidwell was also a guest, but McKay demurred: “The last thing people want to hear is one more political argument, so I thought let’s have a back-and-forth, talk about some of the facts.”
What people want to hear is all of the arguments and counter-arguments, side by side, in one place. How about a meeting, Dominion? How about a debate?