The Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority (BCSWA) has turned down a request by Mountaineer Gas to put a compressed natural gas (CNG) facility on an old landfill next to the Grapevine Road recycling facility in Martinsburg, West Virginia.
Clint Hogbin, the chair of the Solid Waste Authority, said a Mountaineer representative called him on July 15, 2020 to inquire about leasing land owned by BCSWA for the Mountaineer CNG facility.
Hogbin said he raised Mountaineer’s interest at a regularly scheduled BCSWA board on that same day.
“The BCSWA discussed the issue and expressed concerns and reservations about the proposed CNG facility,” Hogbin wrote in a legal declaration. “On July 16, 2020 I notified Mountaineer of the BCSWA’s desire not to proceed with further discussions in regard to hosting the proposed facility on BCSWA property.”
“A paved private access road known as Landfill Drive runs to the proposed location on BCSWA property that could allow for truck access to the facility,” Hogbin wrote. “However, these trucks would need to co-mingle with the day to day traffic of the Grapevine Road Recycling Center and local residents utilizing the road to access their homes.”
Hogbin’s legal declaration was filed as an attachment to comments filed by environmental groups seeking to stop Columbia Gas Transmission from building a gas pipeline under the Potomac River near Hancock, Maryland. Columbia Gas is a unit of TransCanada.
The comments were filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and Potomac Riverkeeper Network in opposition to Columbia Gas’ request for a three year extension of time to build the pipeline under the Potomac.
The gas from that pipeline would feed into a Mountaineer Gas pipeline in Morgan County, West Virginia, flow east to Berkeley County and then on to the soon to be built Rockwool insulation facility in Jefferson County.
The environmental groups argue, in part, that the pipeline under the Potomac is no longer necessary because Mountaineer Gas is planning to put a CNG facility in Berkeley County.
“The Mountaineer representative expressed potential interest in the utilization of up to one acre of land along the property’s edge, near an old closed landfill and near the current location of a large scale recalling center known as the Grapevine Road Recalling Center,” Hogbin wrote in his declaration.
“The Mountaineer Gas representative informed me that the proposed site on BCSWA property would accept CNG, as opposed to liquefied natural gas (LNG),” Hogbin wrote. “I understand from my conversations with the representative that Mountaineer had a separate facility in neighboring Morgan County that was available to accept LNG during the winter of 2019-2020. The representative informed me that the LNG injection site in Morgan County was temporary for the duration of the winter and that the equipment has been removed.”