Virginia Reliability Project
From the company that brought you the Keystone XL pipeline comes another dangerous, outdated pipeline: the Virginia Reliability Project.
The Virginia Reliability Project (VRP), what we’re calling the Virginia Ripoff project, is TC Energy’s proposed plan to dig up 49 miles of a 12-inch diameter pipeline running from Hampton Roads to Central Virginia and replace it with a 24-inch pipeline twice as wide, quadrupling its capacity to channel dangerous, planet-warming methane gas through our communities. This is the equivalent of an additional 750,000,000 gallons of methane gas flowing through Virginia every day.
You may remember TC Energy is the company responsible for pushing the Keystone XL pipeline, an environmental justice disaster that indigenous and frontline communities successfully fought off.
What is VRP?
A 49-mile pipeline expansion project between Central & South East VA from the SAME company who pushed the failed Keystone XL pipeline.
The Route:
Black and brown communities have long been the dumping ground for toxic, polluting fossil fuel infrastructure, and it’s far past time to change that dynamic. We cannot allow TC Energy to embed environmental racism into our energy future for the decades to come. That’s why we need you to help us say: NO VRP.
Health Impacts
VRP puts already vulnerable communities at greater risk. By TC Energy’s own calculations, the population along the project route and near compressor stations suffer from significantly higher health risk rates compared to the state and US averages, including in cardiovascular disease, diabetes, life expectancy, low birth weight, exposure to PM2.5 pollution, and self-reports of poor health.
Thirteen public schools and one hospital are within 1.5 miles or less of the route, including Hillpoint Elementary in Suffolk, just 300 feet from the pipeline’s path.
This raises enormous environmental justice concerns. Within 1 mile of the pipeline’s route, more than half the population are communities of color and nearly half the population live below the poverty line.
Environmental Impacts
VRP will threaten three fragile and cherished bodies of water: the Nansemond River, the Great Dismal Swamp, and the Chesapeake Bay. This will fragment coastal habitat that native wildlife rely on, and subject waters to herbicides used to kill vegetation along the route.
The Great Dismal Swamp is home to some of the most important wildlife in the mid-Atlantic region. The project would cut through 4.2 miles of this key protected habitat.
The Nansemond River is part of the Western Branch Reservoir (WBR), major source waters for Norfolk, Suffolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, and Portsmouth. WBR is also a pristine Virginia Fish and Game Area. VRP will also cut through the historic Veterans Cemetery in Suffolk, Virginia.
Many of these watersheds, which provide fish, oysters and drinking water to Indigenous Americans and historic Black waterway communities, are currently undergoing environmental rehabilitation—which the VRP would threaten with its risky horizontal drilling.
Further, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s draft environmental statement plainly states that the project would exacerbate climate change. VRP would increase Virginia’s greenhouse emissions by two percent, which is incompatible with the state’s statutory target of net-zero emissions by 2045, as well as interim emissions reduction targets.
Corruption
In order to persuade federal regulators that the project is necessary, TC Energy has been ghostwriting letters of support from key Virginia officials, including:
- Rick West, Mayor of Chesapeake
- Robert Dyer, Mayor of Virginia Beach
- Frank Ruff, Virginia State Senator
- Tommy Wright Jr, Virginia Delegate
- Les Adams, Virginia Delegate
“We appreciate your willingness to draft a letter of support to FERC and I am writing to follow up. We are in the process of submitting letters and I have attached a draft letter for your review,” the company wrote to Mayor Dyer.
Black and brown communities have long been the dumping ground for toxic, polluting fossil fuel infrastructure, and it’s far past time to change that dynamic. We cannot allow TC Energy to embed environmental racism into our energy future for the decades to come. That’s why we need you to help us say: NO VRP.
