“The inaccurate data provided by DEQ and ACP is further example of erasure of the Black community, and it is textbook environmental racism.” [UPDATED]

[UPDATE 1/5: See Jon Sokolow’s comments, below.]

The following comments to the Virginia DEQ are by “Community organizer, documentarian, and life-long resident of Virginia” Whitney Whiting, who tells me she thinks it would be valuable to have a more public record of comments before the meeting on January 8. I agree! A few key points made by Whiting include:

• “Attempts to ignore, discredit, diminish, and otherwise erase this history, allowing corporations to exploit people and land for profit, are the very tools of environmental racism.”
• “I would offer to the Department of Environmental Quality and other agencies of the Commonwealth, that their recent actions are a sad testament to the ongoing systemic racism that has patterned our economy and the lives of black people for generations.”
• “Dominion Energy is being allowed to benefit from the historic erasure of this same black community, enabled by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, and by Governors Northam and McAuliffe. This is to me, the definition of structural and environmental racism – a system by which those with decision-making power arbitrarily grant significance to certain populations, uplifting a certain history, and benefiting a certain demographic class, while erasing, displacing,and exploiting others for the benefit of those who already hold power, wealth, and influence.”
• “The inaccurate data provided by DEQ and ACP is further example of erasure of the Black community, and it is textbook environmental racism.”
• “The cast of powerful actors that have influenced the outcome of this decision from the very beginning – from former Governor McAuliffe and his former Secretary of Agriculture/now Dominion representative Basil Gooden, to current Governor Northam’s blatant interference in the just proceedings of the members of the Air Pollution Control Board – all of their actions must be taken into account on this subject of the compressor station and environmental justice”