Just posted this on Augusta County Alliance. Apologies for the repetition. Report from the Dominion Open House at Expo. I thought it was notable that Dominion positioned a whole bevy of clean-cut smiling young women at the entrance (and a couple of guys on laptops). It was a bit like walking into a sorority, or maybe a car show. When one of them approached to proselytize, I just said, Are you an engineer? When she said no, I said, Can you take me to an engineer? She very kindly pointed me towards some guys who might be engineers, but it took an older woman actually to take us to a very young, very earnest structural engineer named James. Me: I have just one question. If a sinkhole abruptly opens up underneath this pipeline, say, 20-30 feet deep and 100 or 1000 feet long, will this pipeline be able to sustain its integrity? James: No, it wont. End of story! What was interesting about the discussion that followed was that James never tried to convince me that the pipeline was a good thing. He tried to convince us that this was all preliminary. He assured us that the final route has not been decided, that they were still contracting with geologists and scientists, probably from VA Tech, to determine if the proposed route is the best. We said that in less than a week we already knew that the karst formations are unstable, prone to unpredictable sinkholes and he just confirmed that such an event would be catastrophic and asked why Dominion didnt already know that, why they went ahead a proposed this route in the first place instead of following the guidelines of the states Department of Mines and Minerals and avoiding karst altogether. (I wish I had said that was kind of like noticing that a school or a nitroglycerine factory was right in the middle of the route but proposing to go through it first and then getting experts to examine the pros and cons, but I didnt think of it till later. Still, I think I made the point.) We agreed that it was not in the best interest of Dominion to build a pipeline that is in such danger of rupture or leakage. He assured me that Dominion had a fantastic safety record and would be closely monitoring and maintaining the line. I said that I was sure it was true they would try and that I realized that statistically transport by pipeline is safer than by truck or rail, but I brought it back to a catastrophic sinkhole--how could Dominion workers respond quickly to an event like that in the wilderness of Highland County before irredeemable damage was already done to forest and water? He admitted that, in that scenario, they couldnt. I didnt think it was necessary to bring up what an explosion where people live would do. By that time, Kathy had joined a group listening to an older environmental engineer named Bill, who, as far as I could tell, was mostly just emphasizing that Dominion would have to jump through all kinds of government hoops to get approval for crossing rivers and wetlands, the assumption being that we could trust the agencies to look out for us. Kathy was pretty much giving him hell about why Dominion wasnt following Transcos route and all the pitfalls of crossing water. As I stood on the edge of the group, a much older Dominion rep came up behind us and said, with a car salesmans smile, If you want lights and heat, you have to have this pipeline. I turned on him and said, No, we dont. There are other ways He smirked as if I were some ivory tower environmentalist and started to say, Wind and solar cant do the job yet, but I cut him off and said I wasnt talking about alternative energy but alternative routes that are more stable and dont cut through a Valley that is entirely underpinned by karst. He literally just shrugged his shoulders, said Oh, and walked away. I think we got a very good idea of what Dominions arguments are and what arguments they are not prepared to deal with. In that respect, it was a good open house.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 01:59:08 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015