THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 1, 1994 TAG: 9407300440
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 48 lines
The recent hearing held by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission concerning the Lake Gaston pipeline produced tired facts, tired rhetoric - and one interesting threat.
It is interesting because it comes not from the usual threat-meisters in environmental cases, the bureaucracy, but against it. Gov. George Allen and Attorney General Jim Gilmore seem determined that the commonwealth will not buckle before a recent rash - from Northern Virginia to South Hampton Roads, from gasoline to Gaston - of environmental arrogance in federal regulatory agencies.
The state, Gilmore told the FERC panel, will file with the court and with FERC in support of Virginia Beach against North Carolina. The Allen administration's legal support on the pipeline - and its political support in the battle the Gaston pipeline has long since become - is wel-come.
But the state's interest, Attorney General Gilmore made clear, goes beyond Virginia Beach's problems with the Gaston pipeline. It also goes beyond Virginia's determination to fight an EPA interpretation that would supersede state law and give standing to sue to stop a project on supposed environmental grounds to anyone who takes a seat at a public hearing.
``I have been in contact with other attorneys general through this country,'' Gilmore said, ``regarding the increasing misuse of our environmental laws to achieve results that have nothing to do with environmental protection. There is a rising tide among the states that such misuse of environmental laws should not be tol-er-at-ed.''
Among the symptoms of this rising tide nationwide: a Sierra Club suit to protect four endangered species that could require San Antonio to cut the water supply to its 1.4 million residents by 65 percent in times of drought. Concern for the kangaroo rat delays the cleanup of a hazardous-chemicals site that threatens groundwater supplies in Beaumont, Calif. A dam on a Colorado creek was denied because it might affect a whooping crane habitat some 250 miles away in Nebraska.
The environmental laws and regulations are so broadly written that they positively invite abuses such as the one North Carolina is using to halt Lake Gaston. If Gilmore can galvanize his fellow attorneys general to fight this situation, the country could be on the road to a more scientific and sensible environmental policy. by CNB