The Virginia Outdoors Foundation will be expanding the public comment period at its Board of Trustees meeting on Thursday, November 6, 2014 in Richmond in order to accommodate growing interest in several agenda items. Details about the meeting can be found here. The full agenda and background materials will be posted by close of business…
Update: The Highland Recorder reported in August that the Spectra proposal has been suspended. The Virginia Outdoors Foundation has learned that three energy companies—Dominion Resources Inc., Spectra Energy, and EQT Corporation—are developing natural gas transmission line proposals that could traverse areas of Virginia where VOF holds a significant number of open-space easements. We want to…
At its April 22 meeting, the Virginia Outdoors Foundation’s Board of Trustees voted that, going forward, it will decline to accept charitable gifts of easement that retain rights for on-site oil and gas drilling. The decision was made after extensive research and input gathering, which included a VOF-hosted public forum in Fredericksburg on March 13….
Videos from the Virginia Outdoors Foundation’s March 13, 2014 forum about conservation easements and oil and gas production are now accessible through VOF’s YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/vofonline. The approximately 4.5-hour forum has been divided into three segments, featuring each of the three main presenters: Michael Ward of the Virginia Petroleum Council, Kate Wofford of the…
About 80 people attended a VOF-sponsored forum in Fredericksburg on March 13 to discuss the issue of natural gas extraction on conservation easements. The four-hour forum featured presentations from the Shenandoah Valley network, Virginia Petroleum Council, and Northcentral Pennsylvania Conservancy. Nearly two hours were devoted to questions and comments from the public, including several environmental…
Editor’s note: This piece was published in the February 3, 2014 print edition of the Virginian-Pilot, in response to the paper’s criticism of VOF’s policies about oil and gas extraction on conservation easements. In its January 27 editorial “Conservation, Not Fracking,” the Virginian-Pilot asserted that two years ago the Virginia Outdoors Foundation “changed its easement…