A Virginia city’s “blue greenway” aims to reduce chronic flooding

CLIMATE: Norfolk, Virginia, works through the design stage of a hotly debated $400 million project to reimagine a poor, majority Black community that includes a linear “Blue Greenway” to capture stormwater and reduce flooding that regularly saturates the neighborhood. (Energy News Network)

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ALSO: Documents reveal Alabama officials have long been aware of Black residents’ flooding concerns, but have used restrictive land covenants to block their ability to file flooding-related claims. (Inside Climate News)

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PIPELINES:

• A rupture of the Mountain Valley Pipeline during hydrostatic testing has exacerbated fears of Virginia and West Virginia residents about the controversial project’s safety and reliability as the pipeline seeks permission from federal regulators to begin operations. (Roanoke Times, Charleston Gazette-Mail)
• A pipeline safety watchdog says federal regulators “should be on notice” and request more information about a rupture of the Mountain Valley Pipeline during testing before approving the project for service. (West Virginia Public Broadcasting)
• Virginia regulators issue 13 fines totaling $31,500 to the Mountain Valley Pipeline for pollution violations over the winter and spring. (WVTF, Cardinal News)
• The Tennessee Valley Authority presses federal regulators to approve a 125-mile pipeline in Tennessee to feed a gas-fired plant planned for the site of an existing coal plant. (E&E News, subscription; Appalachian Voices)

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ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Workers at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama begin voting whether to join the United Auto Workers, just weeks after a Tennessee Volkswagen plant opted to unionize. (AL.com)

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STORAGE: Texas’ rapidly growing battery sector has already bailed out the state power grid once this year, injecting 2 GW of power on a warm April night as a large number of gas and coal plants were offline for maintenance. (Canary Media)

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SOLAR:

• A 70-acre brush fire erupts at a Florida solar farm, with equipment preventing firefighters from more quickly extinguishing the flames. (WKMG)
• An energy company and outdoor retailer collaborate on development of a 2.8 MW solar farm in Tennessee. (CleanTechnica)

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WIND:

• Dominion Energy slightly delays construction of its offshore wind farm near Virginia because of a late-arriving ship, but says a lawsuit over its effects on endangered whales won’t affect the timeline. (Virginian-Pilot)
• Oklahoma residents push to change county zoning codes to block development of wind farms. (Tulsa World)

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OIL & GAS: Workers building a $21 billion liquified natural gas plant in Louisiana are beset by dangerous, silica-laden dust blown around at the construction site. (Sierra)

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GRID: A Georgia water group releases a report showing how state economic incentives have resulted in a rash of new data centers that strain the power grid and use large amounts of water for cooling. (Georgia Recorder)

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EMISSIONS:

• West Virginia leads 25 Republican-led states in challenging the U.S. EPA’s new rule to restrict carbon emissions from existing coal-fired power plants and new gas facilities, hoping for a repeat of a 2022 case that limited the agency’s authority. (E&E News)
• A wave of corporations are likely to miss their climate goals, either pulling back on emission targets or seeing a United Nations initiative decertify their plans because they’re too vague.  (Houston Chronicle)

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