Safe Coast Virginia Conference: One-of-a-kind climate action this Saturday!

Coastal Virginia is at the center of the fight against climate change. That’s why, this Saturday from 9:30-4:30pm Hampton Roads residents and Virginians from across the commonwealth are coming together in Norfolk for the Safe Coast Virginia Conference. Community and clean energy leaders, scientific experts and climate champions from Virginia and beyond will deliver keynotes and lead discussions about the threat of rising seas and bigger storms and how we can move towards a clean energy future that keeps us safe.
To join us, you can pre-register for the Safe Coast Virginia Conference online until midnight November 14th, or register at the door.
Continue reading

Cove Point community deserves to hear from Dominion

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.
Continue reading

Exporting natural gas is a bad deal for Maryland

The Washington Post
By James McGarry
Imagine somebody offered you a deal. First, you have to agree to take a pay cut at your job. Second, you have to agree to pay more for basic necessities such as food and electricity. Third, you have to breathe dirtier air and live next to a dirtier Chesapeake Bay. And what do you get in exchange for all this pain? You get to watch a handful of companies that are already doing extremely well make a lot more money. Would you take that deal?
When it comes to exporting U.S. natural gas from a drilling process called fracking, that’s the tradeoff for the public.
Virginia-based Dominion Resources wants to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) through the Chesapeake Bay via a facility at Cove Point in southern Maryland. This project would not only damage our state’s environment, it is also part of an unwise potential national shift toward exporting natural gas, which threatens the economy and jeopardizes our country’s goal of reducing harmful greenhouse gas pollution.
Continue reading

Cove Point controversy draws growing media attention statewide

At one time, few people came to Dominion’s public meetings because they were “so boring,” an almost wistful Dominion spokesman, Don Donovan, told WAMU-FM in recent a news report.
Well, they’re attending now. Calvert County residents are taking note and finding nothing boring about Dominion’s plan for a $3.8 billion facility at Cove Point to export fracked natural gas to India and Japan.
People don’t come “unless somebody scares them to come,” Donovan said.
Or maybe they find out the stark truths hidden behind the fancy news releases about jobs (not so many permanent ones) and tax revenue (minus some hefty tax giveaways). After a news conference called by a Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN)-led coalition in September, regional media have been waking up to Calvert County as ground zero in this scheme. And residents of Lusby, who live closest to the planned facility, are making their voices heard. So far, coverage of the “Clean Energy, Not Cove Point” campaign has appeared in Southern Maryland Newspapers Online (SoMdNews), Bay Net, the Bay Journal, WAMU-FM, the Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, the Daily Record (subscription req’d), the Frederick News-Post, and WJZ-TV.
Continue reading

Cove Point: Opening salvos and closing windows

The Maryland Crossroads campaign for “Clean Energy, Not Cove Point” is heating up. As is the planet. And energy giant Dominion is getting a little hot under the collar as well.
A statewide coalition of environmental, health, faith and public interest groups kicked off a nine-stop Maryland tour Tuesday, Nov. 5, to raise the alarm about a proposed $3.8 billion climate-killing facility on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay that would export liquefied fracked gas to India and Japan. With three stops completed, interest and opposition to the Cove Point plant in Calvert County are building. The first stop was Tuesday, Nov. 5, in Annapolis, where a big crowd turned out at Broadneck High School. This was followed by an even larger crowd packing a hall at St. Mary’s College on Wednesday, Nov. 6. Last night, Nov. 7, a packed room of nearly 250 people from across Montgomery County gathered at the civic center in downtown Silver Spring.
In addition, a Gonzales poll of Marylanders released Nov. 5 finds that a huge bipartisan majority, 81 percent, wants Dominion to conduct a comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement of the health, climate and safety hazards of the facility — rather than the less rigorous Environmental Assessment.
Continue reading

Environmental group again rallies residents to action against Dominion project

SoMdNews

By Amanda Scott

Maryland is at a crossroads between clean, renewable energy and a “radical detour,” according to Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

On Wednesday night, about 50 people attended CCAN’s town hall meeting at St. Mary’s College of Maryland as part of the organization’s nine-stop “Maryland Crossroads 2013 Tour: Clean Energy, Not Cove Point!” The purpose of the tour is “to rally public opposition” and “educate Marylanders” about Dominion’s proposed liquefied natural gas export project at its Cove Point facility in Lusby, according to a CCAN press release. CCAN is a nonprofit group whose mission is to fight global warming in the Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., area. Wednesday’s meeting followed an Oct. 22 meeting CCAN held in Lusby.

“Maryland really has been, the last 10 years, on a path of transitioning off of climate-changing fossil fuels and on to clean, renewable energy,” CCAN Executive Director Mike Tidwell said. “But in the past six months, a radical detour has been proposed for our state. It’s a very different energy vision that would seriously knock us off our current path.”

Continue reading

Should Maryland Allow A Natural Gas Export Facility On The Chesapeake Bay?

WAMU 88.5

By: Jonathan Wilson

Jean Marie Neal leads me down a short-mulched path behind her house, onto the sand of Cove Point Beach. We’re looking out onto the Chesapeake Bay — Cove Point Hollow specifically. There are other homes that back up to the beach, but mostly what you see here are trees, sand and water… until you look to your north and a bit west, about a mile in the distance.

That’s where Dominion’s property lies, and where two stark white storage tanks rise up above the trees.

“The overall concern is that what you’re doing is you’re turning this entire area into an industrial site — that, itself, just blows your mind,” Neal says.

Continue reading

200 Calvert Residents Protest Council Decision to Give Zoning Control to Federal Government Over Controversial $3.8 Billion Proposed Gas Export Facility at Cove Point

At least 200 concerned Calvert residents left highly frustrated and dismayed October 29 after the County Commissioners and the Planning Committee held a joint public hearing about the proposed Dominion Cove Point LNG export facility. The hearing focused on a proposal to grant exemption from the International Building Code on LNG export facilities. This would exempt the buildings associated with the Cove Point project from county building and zoning regulations, leaving it up to federal regulators in Washington, D.C. to enforce key local laws meant to protect Calvert County residents and businesses.
Despite the testimony of at least 35 people expressing concerns over the proposed Cove Point facility, the Commissioners voted 4-1 to hand over control to Washington officials instead of maintaining local control. Attendees overwhelmingly expressed their belief that local citizens’ health and environmental well being would be best protected with local zoning control, not control in Washington.
Continue reading

Weekly Climate Insider: Chinese Smog, Powershift, and Fracking in Virginia

Bad news from Huffington Post: The Canadian Arctic has reached the highest temperatures in at least 44,000 years. Gifford Miller, a researcher at the University of Colorado, Boulder, says, “This study really says the warming we are seeing is outside any kind of known natural variability, and it has to be due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.” This study reaffirms that global temperatures are rising at an unprecedented rate: we’ve seen a warming trend for the past century, but the process has been accelerating significantly since the 1970s and has skyrocketed in the last twenty years. Miller didn’t end on a happy note. “We expect all of the ice caps to eventually disappear, even if there is no additional warming.
Continue reading