Source: Charleston Gazette-Mail
The heartbreaking effects of market forces and a federal regulatory onslaught on Appalachia stretch far beyond discouraging headlines about lost mining and energy jobs and mounting budget pressures from declining severance tax revenue.
Just look at Boone County, where about 40 school district employees resigned amid an ongoing budget crisis triggered by the state’s economic downturn and losses in energy-related property tax value.
The positions now left vacant include assistant principals, teachers, coaches and special education teachers — positions formerly held by many of those our children looked up to.
Communities and hard-working families in West Virginia deserve a better future than this.
While it might be obvious, this is precisely why Consumer Energy Alliance recently launched the “Pipelines for America” campaign, which aims to educate families, households and small businesses across the nation about the increasing importance of U.S. energy infrastructure to their health, wallets and communities, and what it could mean for states like West Virginia hit hard by mining job losses.
Energy is a critical ingredient that powers literally every American industry — everything from agriculture and automotive to chemicals and steel.
When energy costs increase, it’s a direct hit on various sectors’ bottom lines. Price spikes in energy also act as a regressive tax for families, seniors living on fixed incomes and those with incomes below the poverty level.
Mountaineers know this better than most.
Despite the economic headwinds, West Virginia is blessed with low-cost affordable electricity and a vibrant manufacturing and industrial sector that stands to benefit from expanding pipeline infrastructure where large amounts of stranded Marcellus Shale gas need to get to marketplaces.
It also remains in position to be a key driver in the petrochemical manufacturing renaissance, and its strategic location is ideal from an infrastructure perspective.
Currently, there are six pipeline projects before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission waiting approval that could produce $6 billion in economic investment, 18,000-plus jobs and more than $60 million in local property taxes, which could help communities like Boone County and school districts across the state put people back to work.
As an added bonus, the pipeline projects waiting approval would also transport West Virginia-produced energy through steel and construction materials made by West Virginia manufacturers and others in the Appalachian region.
Studies have repeatedly shown that pipelines are the most reliable, secure way to transport energy and bring it to market.
And they’re only getting safer. Per reports, operators are hard at work creating, practicing and improving new methods for inspecting, monitoring, building and performing preventive maintenance while also enacting new systems for managing pipeline safety programs.
You’d think these overwhelming benefits would make siting and approving pipeline projects a no-brainer.
Unfortunately, a small group of vocal activists who are part of the “Keep it in the Ground” movement are determined to stop energy development across the country regardless of any safety or regulatory stringency or its adverse economic impact.
Celebrities like Shailene Woodley, Rosario Dawson and Karenna Gore, and the various groups they finance, are good at using their names to make headlines by rallying against energy production and pipelines, but they aren’t concerned with your local tax base, utility bills or what energy development could mean for you, your community or West Virginia.
Now more than ever, the people of Appalachia need their local, state and national leaders to embrace an all-of-the-above energy policy that maintains the Mountain State’s illustrious energy equilibrium — starting with getting some badly needed new pipeline projects approved and in the ground.
Brydon Ross is vice president of state affairs for the Consumer Energy Alliance.