The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality announced Thursday that it has set a July 23 public hearing on the request from Northrop Grumman for a state operating permit that would allow the release of 24.9 tons of hazardous air pollutants at a planned advanced electronics assembly and testing facility.
The public hearing will be held at Waynesboro High School, with a scheduled start time of 6:30 p.m.
DEQ also announced the opening of another public comment period, beginning today, June 18, and running through the public hearing date on July 23.
ICYMI
This is the people speaking, and the government listening, after it had appeared that DEQ was trying to get away with an under-advertised public comment period on the permit request earlier in the year.
DEQ announced that comment period in a public notice published in The News Virginian on March 12, which might meet legal requirements, but according to the Virginia Press Association, The News Virginian has a print circulation of 692, and it stopped printing daily in 2023 – it’s now available three days a week.
A three-days-a-week circulation of 692, in a city of 23,951.
Quick math: at absolute best, 2.9 percent of us saw it.
Word, eventually, did get out – the DEQ memo says the agency received “written (email and hardcopy) comments from 250 individuals.”
Of those, 218 requested a full-fledged public hearing.
Per the memo, the DEQ can call a public hearing based on a finding that “there is a significant public interest in the issuance, denial, amendment, modification, or revocation of the permit in question as evidenced by receipt of a minimum of 25 individual requests for a public hearing.”
That low bar having been met, we’re going to get a public hearing on this.
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Chris Graham
