Crowds swell for pipeline discussion in Staunton
STAUNTON - Valley citizens flooded the Holiday Inn in Staunton Thursday night to give their thoughts on the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline.
The event was one of many official listening sessions the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is holding to receive feedback on its Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the project.
Attendees weigh in on the proposed pipeline project and the FERC approval process in the video below:
"A lot of the information we get is from people who show up at sessions like this," said David Swearingen, the FERC branch chief for the Division of Gas-Environment and Engineering.
They had 162 people show up at a session in Nelson County on Wednesday night, he said, and 116 people had already submitted or signed up to submit comments about an hour and fifteen minutes into the four-hour session Thursday night.
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It was not a town hall style open comment period, rather people signed up for three-minute time slots to submit comments privately to a FERC official, a change that the agency made within the last year, Swearingen said. They had four court reporters working to each take one person's comments at a time Thursday.
In the past there had been "rowdiness" at sessions like this and people felt intimidated, plus many who signed up to give comments didn't get to make them before the session expired — this way is more efficient and everyone gets to speak truly how they feel without fear of being booed by the crowd, he said.
"This way we can hear from everybody," he said. "We've found that it really does work very well."
While he acknowledged that people might be skeptical that their comments will be considered by FERC officials, Swearingen said "we have an obligation" to give them heavy consideration. Many times the comments that they receive result in either additional protective measures or route changes, for example, he said.
Both Tom Hadwin, of Waynesboro, and Katherine Barnes, of Staunton, were among several attendees submitting comments who said they weren't so sure they believe that, saying they gave feedback to FERC ahead of its release of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement and felt those comments were ignored.
"You get the impression that they've already made the decision and they just have to go through the motions at this point," Barnes said. "It makes me angry — I feel like the rules were not written to protect us, that the rules were not written to protect this land."