Head of DEQ previously did consulting work for Mountain Valley Pipeline - Roanoke Times

DEQ director did previous work for Mountain Valley Pipeline

Before he became director of Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality in 2022, Michael Rolband headed a consulting firm that did work for the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

Some say Rolband’s past relationship with the pipeline creates a conflict of interest for the leader of a state agency that enforces environmental regulations — rules that DEQ has cited Mountain Valley for violating in the past.

“I think that’s a huge conflict of interest,” Donna Pitt of Preserve Giles County said last month, as she watched muddy water in a natural spring flow past her from a nearby pipeline construction site in Newport.

“No wonder they haven’t responded,” Pitt said of DEQ’s silence about her complaint that sediment was being washed into nearby Sinking Creek.

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Rolband

In 1991, Rolband founded Wetland Studies and Solutions Inc. The natural resources consulting firm was later hired by Mountain Valley to provide advice on dealing with the impacts of running a 42-inch diameter natural gas pipeline through streams and wetlands.

By the time Rolband was appointed to head DEQ two years ago, the agency had cited Mountain Valley with more than 300 violations of erosion and sediment control regulations during construction that continues today. The company was fined $2.15 million as part of a 2019 consent decree. At the time, state officials said the legal action was designed to crack down on future violations.

But since work resumed last summer under Rolband’s watch, Mountain Valley has so far been cited for just two violations of the consent decree and fined $2,500.

What happened in Newport “is not unique along the roughly 100 miles of the pipeline in Virginia,” Russell Chisholm, co-director of Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights coalition, told the State Water Control Board during a Feb. 23 public hearing.

DEQ’s failure to act, Chisholm said, is “part of a pattern that reinforces the public perception that the project is self-regulated, self-investigated and allowed to continue polluting with impunity.”

Amy Nelson of Blacksburg, who said she has seen sediment in streams along the path of the 303-mile long pipeline as a certified water quality monitor, urged the agency to do more.

“DEQ’s failure to enforce its regulations and hold MVP accountable for violations has emboldened MVP to flaunt those regulations,” Nelson said.

A ‘perceived conflict of interest’

Rolband — who was present at the recent public hearing but did not speak from his seat at the dais — twice declined invitations for an interview with The Roanoke Times, made by emails to DEQ’s public information officer on Feb. 6 and Feb. 26.

But in documents provided to the newspaper in response to a Virginia Freedom of Information Act request, he acknowledged shortly after taking his job that his past dealings with Mountain Valley raises “a perceived conflict of interest.”

In a memorandum sent to top DEQ officials and the Virginia Attorney General’s Office dated Feb. 15, 2022, shortly after he was appointed DEQ director by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Rolband wrote that he “previously had business interests that were involved in work on the Mountain Valley Pipeline.”

“I have divested, or am in the process of divesting myself, from those business interests,” he wrote. “However, to avoid any perceived conflict of interest under state law,” the memorandum stated, Rolband delegated all of his authority over the pipeline to James Golden, DEQ’s director of regional operations.

The following year, in a second memorandum addressed to the same officials dated March 23, 2023, Rolband revoked that delegation. He wrote that he had removed himself from all personal or business interests with Mountain Valley, which in the past involved consulting for which he was paid an hourly rate.

Rolband did not mention Wetlands Studies and Solutions in either memoranda. A spokeswoman for DEQ declined to comment when asked for details, writing in an email that the agency “is not aware of the details of the contractual agreement between WSSI and MVP.”

Mountain Valley, however, confirmed that the consulting firm has worked for the company.

“MVP has been fortunate to have access to a deep roster of talented environmental consultants and firms, including WSSI, which we have been able to call on to provide specialized expertise for any potential issues that may arise,” spokeswoman Natalie Cox wrote in an email last week.

A spokeswoman for the attorney general declined to say whether the office is satisfied with the way Rolband handled questions about the conflict of interest issue.

“The OAG serves as DEQ’s counsel and therefore we cannot comment due to attorney client privilege,” Victoria LaCivita wrote in an email. WSSI’s vice president of operations, Brian Chromey, also declined to comment.

Bob Holsworth, a former dean at Virginia Commonwealth University and a longtime observer of state government, said it appeared to him that Rolband acted responsibly.

“I can understand why some people in the environmental community wouldn’t trust his judgment,” Holsworth said.

“But that’s a little different from saying that the position of the agency would be any different” had someone else been appointed to the job by Youngkin, a supporter of Mountain Valley, he said.

“It’s not an absolute bright-line case, and it’s the kind of thing you would expect when you have a pro-business governor recruiting people from the business community.”

No one interviewed for this story questioned Rolband’s qualifications. In a story headlined “Stormwater Champions,” a news service managed by the Water Environment Federation described him as playing a leading role in protecting water bodies from the impacts of development.

As the founder of WSSI, headquartered in Gainsville, Virginia, Rolband has “left a significant mark on the Washington, D.C., area” through his work, according to the article in Stormwater Report.

Pitt, of Newport, acknowledged that the transition of environmental officials from the private sector to government, or the other way around, is not new.

“All of these places have revolving doors,” she said. “You get an expert and the reason he’s an expert is because he was part of the industry. Then he gets hired by the government.”

“Is that a conflict of interest?” Pitt asked. “It’s a conflict of interest in the ethical sense, perhaps.”

Time to ‘go on with life’

DEQ defended its record over the past six years. Work on the pipeline began in early 2018 but was stalled repeatedly by legal challenges until last summer, when Congress passed a law that fast-tracked the $7.6 billion project’s completion.

“As a regulatory agency, DEQ is required to, and does, uphold and enforce all applicable regulations,” spokeswoman Irina Calos wrote Friday afternoon in an email.

Mountain Valley says it plans to complete the pipeline by the end of June, providing a needed source of natural gas to markets on the East Coast.

Since construction resumed last summer, teams from DEQ and a third-party monitoring firm have conducted about 40 inspections a week, in addition to responding to citizen complaints, Calos said.

Construction crews are required to correct problems with erosion control measures that are identified in the field within 24 or 72 hours, depending on their severity. Once a quarter, DEQ reviews the cases to determine if civil penalties are called for under the 2019 consent decree.

For the period between June 11 and Sept. 10 of last year, DEQ found two cases in which timely improvements were not made, imposing the total fine of $2,500.

A review of the most recently completed quarter, from Sept 11 through Dec. 10, has not been completed, although Calos said action is expected soon.

From last August through Feb. 9, DEQ responded to a total of 87 complaints from the public. None of those resulted in findings of non-compliance. Many of the public complaints were duplicate reports of the same event, Calos said.

Pipeline opponents, however, say state inspectors are slow to respond to infractions that citizen monitors find at the scene.

Records from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the lead agency overseeing construction of the pipeline, show repeated problems. A review of weekly environmental compliance reports, filed from Dec. 31 through Feb. 17, document at least 38 cases in Virginia of sediment washed by rainfall from construction sites, often into streams and wetlands.

A group of 29 environmental and community groups asked DEQ last month to halt construction until Mountain Valley can demonstrate its compliance with state guidelines. No such stop-work order was issued, and the agency made no reply to a Feb. 8 letter from the groups.

David Sligh of Wild Virginia helped compile the 17-page letter, which included detailed descriptions of cases in which sediment infiltrated Sinking Creek, the Bottom Creek watershed on Bent Mountain, and other water bodies along the pipeline’s route, which runs from northern West Virginia, through Southwest Virginia, to connect with an existing pipeline near the North Carolina line.

DEQ’s failure to respond to the letter “is a slap in the face, particularly to the people who are suffering directly from MVP’s abuse of the environment and our community,” Sligh said.

Sedimentation — which can clog waterways, impede wildlife and aquatic vegetation, contribute to flooding and increase the cost of treating drinking water — is listed by the Environmental Protection Agency as a common form of water pollution.

Pipeline opponents say cases of muddy runoff polluting water bodies began to increase in early January, as rainfall picked up, and are now as bad as the infractions that led to the $2.15 million consent decree in 2019.

Supporters of the pipeline counter that the problems have been prolonged by repeated legal challenges from opponents, which have led to permits being thrown out time and time again.

Those supporters include Rolband, who spoke as a private citizen to the State Water Control Board at a meeting in 2021, after he retired from WSSI and before he was appointed director of DEQ.

The construction of almost any pipeline has temporary environmental impacts like the ones seen with Mountain Valley, he said. Those problems go away when the job is finished and final restoration controls are put in place.

“That’s what we have to do,” Rolband told the board. “So somehow we’ve got to come together, get this project done, in the ground and restored, and go on with life.”

Laurence Hammack (540) 981-3239

laurence.hammack@roanoke.com