Five University students were arrested March 7 in the lobby of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality in Richmond. The students, a part of the Climate Action Society and members of the Virginia Student Environmental Coalition, were arrested along with 12 other activists from around the Commonwealth.
Student activists were protesting the permits issued to Dominion Virginia Power to release treated coal ash wastewater from 11 sites across Virginia into natural waterways, including one at Bremo Power Station, which is less than 50 miles from Charlottesville.
Although the DEQ and Dominion claim the process to be used is environmentally sound, some student activists like Climate Action Society member Laura Cross, a second-year College student, question its safety.
Some wastewater will be released into the James River, which serves as the principal drinking source for the Richmond area. Cross was one of the students arrested over the issue.
“Last year Dominion illegally released 27.5 million gallons of untreated wastewater into the Potomac river with arsenic levels saturated as high as 900 parts per billion — 90 times the safe level for drinking water and six times the DEQ’s own threshold concentration,” Cross said in an email statement. “This wastewater was untreated and poisonous.”
Dominion Virginia Power Spokesperson Rob Richardson said the process complies with state and federal regulations.
“This is a plan that started with the [Environmental Protection Agency]. The committee started planning this two years ago and they issued the coal combustion rule last year and laid out a plan for utilities to close coal ash ponds,” Richardson said. “Dominion is complying with the EPA,”
Dominion will also be monitoring the affected waterways by studying fish populations as a result of a meeting with members of the James River Association.
“What we’ve agreed to do as a result of that meeting is to do fish sampling. I can’t tell you the details of how that’s going to work, [as in] how many fish we’re going to catch and how often,” Richardson said. “What we’re going to do is catch fish, test the fish [and] do some sampling to see what the impact is on the fish population on the James River as a result of discharging the wastewater.”
Will Hayden, a spokesperson for the DEQ, said the permits issued to Dominion for wastewater disposal were issued fairly.
“The permits that DEQ developed were very specifically designed to protect water quality and human health, and the agreements that Dominion reached with other organizations demonstrated that’s what the permits do, and they are legally enforceable,” Hayden said. “The permits do protect the environment and people.”
Student activists questioned the fairness of issuing these permits, as it was recently revealed by NPR that DEQ Director David Paylor accepted gifts from Dominion Power, including a trip to the 2013 Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta, Georgia and a dinner at O’Toole’s Irish Pub for Paylor and nine others.
“DEQ Director David Paylor has an uncomfortably close relationship with the energy giant his department is supposed to regulate,” Cross said. “The fact that the head of the agency accepted gifts from a company that was then given controversial and shocking permits raises several questions.”
Because Paylor makes decisions which directly influence Dominion’s bottom line, Cross said it is “absurd” to think Dominion is not hoping for favors in return for their gifts.
Both Hayden and Richardson, however, denied the relationship between the permits and the gifts.
“There is no connection. Mr. Paylor made that trip in 2013 — he does not direct the development of permits based on his interaction with permit holders,” Hayden said. “There’s no connection at all.”
Richardson said Paylor’s trip and expenses were not in violation of any state laws.
“The facts are that that golf tournament that David Paylor attended was in 2013. That was three years ago. At that time, the trip and the expenses surrounding that trip were all well-documented and fully disclosed in accordance with Virginia law,” Richardson said.
Richardson said the information has been available on the Virginia Public Access Project website since 2013, and Dominion is an advocate for disclosure laws in Virginia, given its role as a founding member of VPAP.
“There’s no connection to the trip and the permits. All was fully disclosed,” Richardson said.
Members of the Virginia Student Environmental Coalition have a meeting with Paylor to discuss the permits March 21. Cross is scheduled to appear in court regarding her trespassing arrest May 11.
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