Tag: Union Hill

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Pipeline voices: Activists look back on a historic victory

In 2018, Dominion began cutting down trees to make way for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which has now been canceled. Photo: Pipeline CSI

On July 5, Dominion Energy abruptly canceled the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, an $8 billion project that would have carried natural gas 600 miles from West Virginia to North Carolina. Environmental activists of all persuasions spent six years fighting the project before finally prevailing over the gigantic power corporation. As the victory set in, C-VILLE caught up with some of central Virginia’s anti-pipeline activists, giving them a chance to reflect—and look ahead. The following interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

 

John Laury

John Laury is the secretary of Friends of Buckingham. He lives in Union Hill, a historically Black community in rural Buckingham County that would have been disrupted by the pipeline.

C-VILLE: Where were you when you heard the news? What was that moment like?

JL: It was amazing to me. I have been praying about this. We have been in the struggle for—working on our sixth year. Really, I was elated. I felt the load was lifted off of me. But at the same time I wasn’t sure that what I heard was true.

Then my mind began to reflect back, to one of the Board of Supervisors meetings two years back, when our pastor Paul Wilson spoke. Dominion was in control at the time. 

He gave the example of David and Goliath. David, a little shepherd boy, with smooth stones and a slingshot, going against Goliath and all of his weaponry. But David was going in the name of God, and Goliath was going on his strength. 

We were always talked to as if this was a done deal. We were even told, “you’re wasting your time. You can’t go against Dominion.” This is what we were against.

Can you describe your home in Union Hill a little bit? What role do you think Union Hill played in the victory against the pipeline?

From where I live now, I was raised across the road. I would be the third generation raised on that 52 acres. We grew greens, and always a garden every year. Fruit trees. That generation believed in raising their food, preparing in summer for the winter.

I enjoyed the four seasons. I enjoyed the people and the natural earth. Spent a long time in the woods. Ate a lot of fruit off the trees the other generation had planted.

We depend on an underground water source, we have wells, that’s the source of water for our home.

As we spoke on panels in different areas of the state—some out of state—we realized that there were other states dealing with similar issues that were detrimental to them as well. The pattern was in the areas of people of color, and the poor, lower income areas…When we raised awareness as to what was happening here in Union Hill, that made a difference.

It’s not just a Union Hill issue. It’s a people issue. And as one of the quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King tells us, if people are hurting anywhere in this world, it should be the concern of all of us.

 

Alice Clair

Alice Clair is a local musician who grew up in Nelson County. Her childhood home is less than a mile from where the pipeline would have run.

C-VILLE: What was your reaction to the news?

AC: I was screaming and crying. No exaggeration, I was screaming and crying. Just, ultimate elation—and also relief. I always said it wasn’t going to happen. But for that to come true is a relief.

You’re a musician. You wrote some songs about the pipeline. What role do you think music played in the effort over the last six years?

Robin and Linda [Williams] are songwriters in Augusta County, and they wrote “We Don’t Want Your Pipeline.” And that has become a classic for us in Virginia, and maybe across the U.S., fighting pipelines.

When I was in high school, Dominion would set up information sessions for the public in our gym. We would go in and be protesting in my high school, people would bring their guitars and play that song. 

I think music, it motivates in every kind of way. If you can get a bunch of people together singing a song, that’s a great way to energize people towards a common good.

Can music help translate this victory into something even bigger?

I had friends travel out to fight against the Keystone and the DAPL pipelines. There’s been so much music that’s come out of that. Not only using old folk songs of protest, but making new ones. 

The fight is not over even though I won at home—I’m so lucky that I was one of the few that could win at home. My land out in Nelson is not going to be affected anymore. Time to turn our eyes to the next one. We’re looking at the Mountain Valley Pipeline now. It is not over, but we’re feeling darn good. 

This is how it should work. If our country may turn to a true democracy one day, that’s what it’s all about. The people using their voice. If the majority don’t want it, it shouldn’t be there. 

 

Ben Cunningham

Ben Cunningham is the field director of the Pipeline Compliance Surveillance Initiative, a group that used technology and community volunteers to document the construction violations Dominion committed as they started building the pipeline. 

C-VILLE: Where were you when you heard the news?

BC: I was about to bite into a really killer sandwich at 3:12pm on Sunday when my intern with my Pipeline CSI program, Virginia Paschal, texted me, all capital letters, CONGRATULATIONS!…Then she sent me a link to an article about it. Then I spent the next half hour just crying in joy and disbelief. 

What was the final straw for Dominion? 

We would never claim that this was all one group or all one strategy’s effort. Death by a thousand cuts—we all believe that’s what it took. It’s gone from Supreme Court hearings and all sorts of different legal battles, to people [protesting] in the trees trying to stop this and other pipelines, to science-and-technology-monitoring programs like ours, as well as strategies like political pressure. Really, community organizing is the bottom line.

…The story of environmental work in this country is the project never dies, people get burnt out, and so on. So I’ve just been plugging away at it, as have hundreds and maybe a thousand other people in various different ways.

Can the win against the ACP set an example for activists fighting other projects?

We’ve got, now, an example that we can win, against the largest political contributor to both parties in our state, arguably the most powerful corporation in our state, and one of the most powerful utilities in the country.

There are countless injustices around the world. I believe in starting where we live—it’s what we’re most familiar with, where we can be most powerful, and where we can effect the most change.

 

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In brief: No pipeline, name game, and more

Activists in Buckingham have been fighting the pipeline since 2014. On Sunday, they won. PC: Friends of Buckingham

Pipeline defeated

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline is history. In a surprise announcement on Sunday afternoon, Dominion Power called off the 600-mile natural gas pipeline that would have run from West Virginia to North Carolina. “VICTORY!” declared the website of the Southern Environmental Law Center.

The news is a major win for a wide variety of environmental advocacy groups and grassroots activists, who have been fighting the pipeline on all fronts since the project was started in 2014. The pipeline would have required a 50-yard-wide clear-cut path through protected Appalachian forest, and also disrupted a historically black community in rural Buckingham County.

Dominion won a Supreme Court case earlier this month, but that wasn’t enough to outweigh the “increasing legal uncertainty that overhangs large-scale energy and industrial infrastructure development in the United States,” says the energy giant’s press release.

Litigation from the Southern Environmental Law Center dragged the pipeline’s construction to a halt. Gas was supposed to be flowing by 2019, but less than 6 percent of the pipe ever made it in the ground.

The ACP had the backing of the Trump administration, and U.S. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette blamed the “obstructionist environmental lobby” for the pipeline’s demise.

“I felt like it was the best day of my life,” says Ella Rose, a Friends of Buckingham member, in a celebratory email. “I feel that all the hard work that all of us have done was finally for good. I feel like I have my life back. I can now sleep better without the worries that threatened my life for so long.”

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Quote of the week

“It is past time. As the capital city of Virginia, we have needed to turn this page for decades. And today, we will.”

—Richmond mayor Levar Stoney on the city’s removal of its Stonewall Jackson and Matthew Fontaine Maury statues

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In brief

Loan-ly at the top

On Monday, the government released a list of companies that accepted loans through the federal Paycheck Protection Program, designed to keep workers employed during COVID’s economic slowdown. A variety of Charlottesville businesses accepted loans of $2-5 million, including Red Light Management, St. Anne’s-Belfield, and Tiger Fuel.

Renaming re-do

An advisory committee recommended last week that recently merged Murray High and Community Charter schools be renamed Rose Hill Community School, but this suggestion immediately raised eyebrows: Rose Hill was the name of a plantation that later became a neighborhood. The committee will reconvene to discuss options for a new moniker.     

City hangs back

Charlottesville is one of a handful of localities that have pushed back against Governor Ralph Northam’s order to move to Phase 3 of reopening. While some of the state has moved forward,  City Manager Tarron Richardson has decided to keep the city government’s facilities operating in accordance with Phase 2 requirements and restrictions. As stated on its website, this decision was made in order to “ensure the health and safety of staff and the public.”

Soldier shut in

Since at least the beginning of July, the gates of UVA’s Confederate cemetery, where a statue of a Confederate soldier stands, have been barricaded, reports the Cavalier Daily. A university spokesman says the school locked the cemetery because protesters elsewhere in the state have been injured by falling statues. Or maybe, as UVA professor Jalane Schmidt suggested on Twitter, “they’re tryna keep the dead from escaping.” 

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Counting up: Pay raise for census takers reflects the importance of getting the numbers right

The Census Bureau is looking to hire hundreds of census takers in Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

With a new decade comes a new census. Starting March 12, every household across the country will receive a letter in the mail, explaining how to respond to the 2020 census by phone, mail, or—for the first time ever—online. 

Census data is used to redraw legislative districts, determining the amount of seats each state is allotted in the House of Representatives, as well as to appropriately distribute more than $675 billion in government funding to communities across the country.

“The census is tied to everything, from health care to housing to social services,” says Kathy O’Connell, who works for the division of the census that oversees Virginia. “It’s extremely important that we have a good count of who lives in a particular place.”

To catch those who don’t respond on their own, the bureau also employs census takers to go door to door and record responses in person. And it is looking to hire hundreds right here in Charlottesville.

“We need large numbers,” says O’Connell, “We are [especially] interested in candidates with language abilities.”

To encourage more people to apply, the bureau has raised the pay for census workers to $22 an hour in Charlottesville and $21.50 in Albemarle County. Other perks include paid training, weekly paychecks, mileage reimbursement, and flexible hours.

Some populations are underrepresented in the data, particularly young people and immigrant communities. Our local Complete Count Committee includes a subcommittee focused on ensuring that refugees and immigrants are aware of the census, as well as identifying and addressing what prevents these populations from participating, such as limited English proficiency and mistrust of the government, says committee co-chair Caitlin Reinhard.

To subvert the many misconceptions surrounding the census, the subcommittee is emphasizing to local communities that the census is confidential, and that “it will have a huge impact on the resources and representation available [to them] over the next 10 years,” Reinhard says.

The Census Bureau is also partnering with a variety of local organizations to increase its outreach. Here in Charlottesville, the International Rescue Committee has created postcards and posters in 10 different languages about the census, along with other informational materials.

“It’s hugely important—now more than ever—that their voices are heard,” says Reinhard, who is also the resettlement manager for the IRC, “and that they are counted as people who make up this great country, whether or not they’re citizens.” (The Trump administration’s attempt to add a question about citizenship status was struck down by the Supreme Court.)

Lakshmi Fjord, a visiting scholar at UVA’s Department of Anthropology, has witnessed the consequences of inadequate census data firsthand. As Dominion Energy worked to build a natural gas compressor station in the historically African American community of Union Hill, the company used broad data from the 2010 census to claim that the area was sparsely populated and predominantly white. 

However, by conducting a door-to-door count of the population, Fjord showed that Union Hill has a greater population density than all other parts of the county, with 83 percent minority residents—meaning the compressor would disproportionately (and illegally) affect African Americans. (The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals repealed Dominion’s permit last month.)

“It’s well known that in particularly rural, and maybe everywhere in African American communities, there is far less chance people will open their door to census takers…[so] we trusted elders from the community to go door-to-door,” Fjord says. “This is also an important thing for the census. You cannot just hire eager young people to go around because there’s just not a sense of who they are.”

For this reason, O’Connell strongly encourages residents who are from the local community and know it well to apply to be census takers. Applications are available now at 2020census.gov. 

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In brief: People power, tech takeover, bye-bye bikes, and more

The old Monticello Dairy building will house at least two big tech companies. PC: Skyclad Aerial

People power

Opponents of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline scored a huge victory last week when the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals repealed Dominion Energy’s permit to build an invasive compressor station in Buckingham County’s historic Union Hill neighborhood.

“Today we showed that our community, our community’s history, and our community’s future matters more than a pipeline,” said Buckingham activist Chad Oba.

Union Hill became a flashpoint for the pipeline fight when activists began emphasizing the area’s long history. Free black people and former enslaved people founded the neighborhood just after the Civil War. The story of a historic community threatened by an energy monopoly attracted

Al Gore to speak in Buckingham last February. The former vice president called the pipeline a “reckless, racist rip-off.” 

“Environmental justice is not merely a box to be checked,” the court wrote in its decision. “The [Air Pollution Control] Board’s failure to consider the disproportionate impact on those closest to the Compressor Station resulted in a flawed analysis.”

Anti-pipeline groups have sought to slow down Dominion by tying up the project in litigation. The compressor station permit is one of many that pipeline opponents have contested. In the fall, the Supreme Court announced it would hear arguments about whether or not the pipeline could bisect the federally protected Appalachian Trail.

The strategy to slow the project seems to be working—Dominion’s initial estimates said the pipeline would be completed in 2019, but according to the Southern Environmental Law Center, less than 6 percent of the pipe has been laid in the ground so far.

Anti-pipeline protesters gathered in rural Buckingham County last year. PC: Friends of Buckingham County

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Quote of the Week

“This is my life, history. I returned to this area to make sure this story gets told correctly.”

—Calvin Jefferson, archivist and descendant of enslaved people at Monticello, speaking about his family at a panel event this week

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In Brief

You never forget how to ride a scooter

UBike, UVA’s languishing bike-sharing program, has been killed off by the e-scooter boom. The bikes have to be retrieved from and parked in specific docks, making them less convenient than the popular scooters. (Also less convenient: UBikes, unlike e-scooters, don’t have motors.)  

Moving in

PVCC, like other community colleges, is a commuter school—but that could change. As reported in The Daily Progress, plans to sell 17 acres the college owns off Avon Street Extended have been put on hold, as the Virginia Community College System State Board studies whether student housing could be a viable option for some of its community colleges.

Milking it

This town’s tech takeover continues: Two big companies recently signed leases in the Dairy Central office building/retail space currently under construction on Preston Avenue. CoStar, the world’s largest digital real estate company, and Dexcom, which makes diabetes monitoring systems, will together occupy 17,000 feet of office space at the intersection of Rose Hill and 10th and Page, two of Charlottesville’s historically black neighborhoods.

(More) statue drama

With the General Assembly potentially passing a law this year granting localities control over war memorials and monuments on their property, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors is seeking public feedback on the future of the county’s Court Square, including its “Johnny Reb” statue. For the next six months, county staff will hold community conversations and “listening sessions” about the space, as well as conduct public tours, reports The Daily Progress. The Office of Equity and Inclusion’s equity working group will draft options for the future of the property, which the BOS will consider in June.

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In brief: Victory for C-VILLE, new trails, UVA living wage, and more

Dr. Jalane Schmidt and reporter Lisa Provence outside the courthouse. Photo by Jenny Mead

Case dismissed

Judge throws out defamation lawsuit against C-VILLE and UVA prof

On October 28, the Albemarle Circuit Court ruled in favor of C-VILLE Weekly and former news editor Lisa Provence, concluding that a defamation claim brought by Edward Tayloe II lacked the legal basis to proceed. 

Judge Claude Worrell also ruled in favor of UVA professor Jalane Schmidt, whom Tayloe also sued for defamation, citing comments she made in C-VILLE’s story.

The story at issue, “The Plaintiffs: Who’s who in the fight to keep Confederate monuments,” published in March, profiled the 13 people and organizations suing the city to keep the statues in place. Tayloe’s entry noted his lineage as one of the First Families of Virginia, and included information about his family’s history as one of the largest slave-holding dynasties in the state, a matter of historical record published, among other places, in the 2014 book A Tale of Two Plantations. Schmidt is quoted observing, in respect to Tayloe’s ancestors, “for generations this family has been roiling the lives of black people.”

In May, Tayloe sued the paper, Provence, and Schmidt, alleging that the story and Schmidt’s statements were defamatory because they implied that he was racist, and seeking $1.7 million in damages.

As lawyers for C-VILLE argued in their reply in support of their request to dismiss, Tayloe “does not contend that C-VILLE Weekly got any facts wrong in the article at issue. Instead, he is aggrieved by the truthful, if perhaps uncomfortable, presentation of his family history in connection with an accurate report on a subject of public concern.”

Attorneys for C-VILLE and Schmidt characterized the lawsuit as a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation), and ACLU attorney Eden Heilman, representing Schmidt, warned of the “chilling effect” that such lawsuits could have on public discussion.

Before giving his decision, Judge Worrell noted that the “political discourse has gotten pretty rough and tumble” and that it “requires all of us to have a pretty thick skin,” except if one has been defamed or libeled. He went on to declare that neither Schmidt’s statements nor C-VILLE’s story as a whole were defamatory or libelous.

The ruling means the case is dismissed and will not go to trial.

 

 

Quote of the week

“It’s both the right and the smart thing to do.” —UVA President Jim Ryan on the university’s decision to expand its living wage plan to include contracted employees.

In brief

Firing back

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held oral arguments on October 29th on a case to block Dominion Energy from placing a 54,000-horsepower compressor station, fueled by fracked methane gas, in the historically black community of Union Hill in Buckingham County. The Virginia State Air Pollution Control Board—comprised of members appointed by Gov. Ralph Northam, who owns stock in Dominion—issued a permit for the facility in January, inspiring uproar over what supporters call environmental racism.

Land grab

The City of Charlottesville has purchased 142 acres of land adjoining the Ragged Mountain Reservoir, which will be used for trails, environmental education programs, and forest protection, the city announced last week. The city paid $600,000 for the property, most of which was covered by a federal Community Forest Grant, and landowner Louisa Heyward donated the remaining value of the property (roughly $500,000).

Going bagless

For “both budgetary and environmental reasons,” the City of Charlottesville is swapping bagged leaf collection service for vacuum trucks. Starting October 28th, residents can rake their loose leaves to the curb for collection three times a season. Those who insist on bagging leaves can bring them to 1505 Avon Street Extended on Saturdays from 8am-1pm.

Pay raise

UVA announced on October 24 that its major contractors will be paying their full-time workers at least $15 an hour, fulfilling a promise UVA President Jim Ryan made when he raised pay for all full-time UVA employees. The new policy will lift the wages of more than 800 workers, including food service and janitorial staff, and will go into effect January 1.

Showing the receipts 

Days after city residents at the October 21st City Council meeting expressed the need for policy transparency, Mayor Nikuyah Walker has announced that the Charlottesville Police Department will post all policies and general orders to the city’s website, starting in January. At the meeting, speakers said the Police Civilian Review Board should be able to review all CPD policies. Council will vote on a proposed ordinance and bylaws for the CRB on November 4th.

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‘Reckless, racist ripoff:’ Former vice president opposes pipeline in Union Hill

Former vice president Al Gore said the Atlantic Coast Pipeline is a reckless, racist ripoff at a February 19 event in Buckingham County, where Dominion wants to run the pipeline and build one of three compressor stations. Photo by John Robinson

It’s long been clear that the folks of the small, predominately black Union Hill community in bucolic Buckingham County don’t want the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and its compressor station on their soil. And now two well-known voices who condemn environmental racism are joining the fight against it.

Former vice president Al Gore and Reverend William Barber, known across the country for his ministry and political activism, came to Buckingham February 19 and told a crowd of hundreds of community members and allies they oppose what they believe is a risky, expensive, and unnecessary natural gas pipeline that Dominion has intentionally chosen to run through a poor, black neighborhood.

“This is what change looks like,” Gore said to the folks who had spent the night dancing, singing and chanting, holding hands, and pumping fists in solidarity with Union Hill. He added, “I think Dominion is messing with the wrong part of Virginia.”

The former vice president, who also serves as founder and chairman of Climate Reality Project, said the Federal Energy Regulatory Commision never should have given Dominion permission to start building the ACP in the first place, and that current gas pipelines in the country have almost twice as much capacity as the amount of gas flowing through them. Demand for natural gas has decreased as people switch to renewable energy sources and use newer energy-saving technology such as LED lighting, he added.

“This proposed pipeline is a reckless, racist ripoff,” said Gore loudly and passionately into his microphone, bringing most of the crowd to its feet.

Big utility companies like Dominion don’t really make their money by selling electricity or gas, he said, but by building new capacity and adding the cost into their rate base. “If the pipeline is not needed, they have a powerful economic incentive to build it anyway,” he said, echoing what ACP opponents have contended since it was proposed half a decade ago.

The Union Hill story sparked Gore’s interest when he read about a historically significant, low-income community of color being “insulted and abused” by Dominion, which is trying to wreak havoc on a community it thought couldn’t defend itself, he said.

“We’re here to say to Union Hill, you are not standing alone,” said Gore. “We are standing with you.”

ACP spokesperson Karl Neddenien says Dominion has “profound respect” for the Union Hill community, and it plans to invest $5 million to build a community center and upgrade the county’s rescue squad.

Dominion says it chose Union Hill for one of three of the pipeline’s compressor stations because it intersects with an existing pipeline, and because the for-sale property was large enough to also allow for trees and vegetation on-site, with the nearest home a quarter-mile away. The other two, one at the beginning of the pipeline’s route in Lewis County, West Virginia, and the other near the Virginia-North Carolina State line, have also prompted pushback.

Part of Dominion’s justification was also its calculation of approximately 29.6 people per square mile in the surrounding area. Residents say that number is off by about 500 percent, and during their own door-to-door survey of the Union Hill area, they determined that approximately 85 percent of those people are African American.

A third of the county’s residents are descendants of the freedmen community that was established there by former slaves. Dominion is planning to build the compressor station atop freedmen cemeteries and unmarked slave burials, according to Yogaville resident and cultural anthropologist Lakshmi Fjord, who spoke briefly at the event.

Attendees also heard from Mary Finley-Brook, a University of Richmond professor of geography and the environment who served on Governor Ralph Northam’s Advisory Council on Environmental Justice, which recommended against the pipeline last summer. She said her council exposed disproportionate risks for minority communities if the pipeline is built.

“Historic Union Hill is the wrong place to build a compressor station,” said Finley-Brook, who pointed out that poor internet and phone access in Buckingham could mean residents won’t be properly notified of scheduled blowdowns at the station, when gas and toxic air pollutants are released to relieve pressure in the pipe. She also noted the daily safety risk of fires or explosions due to highly pressurized gas equipment and flammable contents.

Reverend Barber touched on how environmental racism is systemic, and how pipelines like the ACP don’t usually run through affluent areas, though politicians and other people of power will encourage poorer communities to accept them.

“Everybody that tells you to be alright with it coming through your community—ask them why it isn’t coming through theirs,” said Barber.

Dominion’s Neddenien says safety standards at the compressor station, if built, will be the strictest of any compressor station in the country, and emissions will be 50 to 80 percent lower than any other station in Virginia.

Barber counters if Northam truly believes that, “request it to be in your backyard.”

Barber also said the power to protest the pipeline lies in the hands of the community, and clarified that he and Gore came to Buckingham by invitation.

“We didn’t come here to lead the fight, we just came here to say, ‘Y’all fight like you never fought before.’”

Irene Ellis Leach is one of those Union Hill community members. Her family has operated a farm four miles away from the proposed site of the compressor station for 117 years, where original buildings built in 1804 are still standing. She says Dominion insists on crossing through the middle of the cattle fields she uses most.

Now she’s one of many landowners in the incineration zone, or the potential impact radius, of 1,100 feet on either side of the pipeline. If it blows, that’s how far the flames will reach.

“If something goes wrong, the resulting fire can’t be put out. It has to burn out,” she says. “We could lose everything, including our lives.”

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On hold: Dominion faces pipeline permit problems

Activists in Buckingham have been fighting the pipeline since 2014. On Sunday, they won. PC: Friends of Buckingham

All is quiet along the proposed path of the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline, now that five federal permits have either been thrown out or put on hold.

A vote on a permit that would allow a 54,000-horsepower pipeline compressor station to be built in Buckingham’s historic African American community of Union Hill, on a former slave plantation, has now been deferred twice by the Air Pollution Control Board.

“If they had voted in favor of the permit the other week, it would have been a riot up in there,” says Pastor Paul Wilson, who leads the Union Hill and Union Grove Baptist churches.

Anti-pipeline activists in Buckingham have called Dominion’s plans to build one of three ACP compressors in that community a stark example of environmental injustice and racism, and have alleged that when looking for a sparsely populated place to build, the energy giant intentionally erased a large percentage of the Buckingham population in its application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The number FERC used in its final environmental impact statement on the ACP was 29.6 people per square mile in the area surrounding the pipeline’s path in Buckingham. Dominion asserts that number was provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, but residents say it was off by about 500 percent.

At a December 19 meeting, the State Air Pollution Control Board again kicked the can down the road by rescheduling the compressor station vote for January 8, when it has declared that public comment from attendees—like the 150 concerned citizens who showed up last month—won’t be accepted.

“From what I’m seeing, unless the [previous] comments changed peoples’ minds on the board, it appears that Dominion will probably get that air permit,” says Wilson. After this story went to press, the board voted unanimously to approve the permit, but Wilson says, “the pipeline can still be stopped.”

In fact, construction—which never started in Virginia—has been halted along the entire 600-mile route from West Virginia into North Carolina as other legal battles play out.

The Southern Environmental Law Center is involved in several of the cases and represents a small coalition of local conservation groups.

SELC attorney Greg Buppert notes a December 13 decision handed down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that threw out a U.S. Forest Service permit that would have allowed the ACP to cross two national forests and the Appalachian Trail.

Buppert says, “Dominion doubled down” by proposing a route—and nearly all of its alternatives—that went through the same point on the trail because it thought it could get around requirements that apply to national parks.

“It gambled the project on this one location,” says Buppert. “I think the decision sends the route and the company back to the drawing board.”

Dominion spokesperson Aaron Ruby says 56 other oil or gas pipelines already cross the trail. Dominion is appealing the ruling—and he’s confident it will prevail.

“Opponents’ tactics in the courts are not doing anything to provide additional protection of the environment,” he said in a December 13 statement. “They are only driving up consumer energy costs, delaying access to cleaner energy, and making it harder for public utilities to reliably serve consumers and businesses.”

While Forest Service employees were initially very skeptical of that permit, they decided to approve it, and the court called their decision “mysterious.”

“Part of the story in that case was several years of concern about the Atlantic Coast Pipeline from the Forest Service, and then political pressure from Washington caused the agency to back down on its concerns,” says Buppert. “Dominion went to political appointees to bend the rules for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. With that kind of gamesmanship, the company shouldn’t be surprised that a federal court has thrown out its permit.”

As Pastor Wilson puts it, “Dominion is trying to beat out the clock.” He adds, “This thing is costing more money each day.”

Dominion’s Ruby told the Washington Post that the once-$6.5 billion project is now looking like $7 billion. His company has had to lay off or delay hiring 4,500 construction workers, and the pipeline that was once scheduled to be fully built by the end of the year is now looking at a mid-2020 completion. Ruby did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The SELC also has plans to challenge the pipeline’s entire approval permit because of what Buppert calls “mounting evidence” that it isn’t necessary to meet future energy needs.

“That evidence is significant enough that it’s getting the attention of important elected officials,” says Buppert. He mentions a January 2 newsletter from Delegate David Toscano, in which the legislator compares the ACP to an old automobile in need of a valve job: “It is leaking serious oil, suffers by comparison to newer, more advanced models, and even if it can be made roadworthy, you and I will pay the bill for decades.”

Toscano also notes in his letter that a recent filing from the State Corporation Commission said Dominion’s projections of demand for electricity and gas “have been consistently overstated,” and that existing pipelines are sufficient to meet future needs.

“It’s hard to justify a load forecast prediction that shows aggressive energy demand growth when the actual numbers for the last 10 years are flat,” says Buppert. “It’s an issue that we’ve worked on for a long time, and I think the data and the facts have caught up with Dominion.”

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Compressor anxiety: Historic African American community alleges environmental racism

The Union Hill community has been united in fighting the Atlantic Coast Pipeline for four years. Courtesy of Friends of Buckingham

About 50 miles south of Charlottesville, in the small, quiet community of Union Hill, there are far more “No Pipeline” signs than traffic lights.

The historic town of weather-faded homes and churches in bucolic Buckingham County could soon be sliced by the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, and in what residents say would add insult to injury, it could become home to one of the 600-mile natural gas pipeline’s three proposed compressor stations.

Residents are calling it “blatant environmental racism,” and allege Dominion intentionally erased a large percentage of their population in its application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to build the pipeline.

In the final environmental impact statement on the ACP, FERC stated that, on average, there are 29.6 people per square mile in the area surrounding the pipeline’s path in Buckingham—that number was provided by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Residents say that number was off by about 500 percent.

Members of the anti-pipeline group Friends of Buckingham went door-to-door to survey the Union Hill area. They spoke with 64 percent of the people living in the 99 households within that square mile, and of those 158 residents, 85 percent are African American.

The FERC report didn’t mention Union Hill, where a third of the residents are descendants of the freedmen community that was once enslaved there, and where there are freedmen cemeteries and unmarked slave burials on the site where Dominion wants to build its compressor station, according to Yogaville resident and cultural anthropologist Lakshmi Fjord.

She also noted that Charlottesville’s 29 bypass project was halted by just one slave burial site.

On May 31, the governor’s Advisory Council on Environmental Justice met in Buckingham to report some of its findings, make recommendations and host a public comment session, but beforehand, members stopped by the Union Hill Baptist Church for a quick presentation and tour of the proposed compressor station site.

“Now we are in our golden years, and we’d like to keep it that way,” said John Laury as he stood at the front of the pews. He listed his grievances, including the poisonous air that he says the station, if approved, would emit, and its potential effect on water quality in the town where most people rely on wells. “That’s the only water we have,” he said.

Laury, who lives with his wife, Ruby, on the cattle farm down the hill and to the left of the Baptist church, was born and raised in Buckingham. He says he likes the clean air that his county is known for, the nearby wooded areas brimming with wildlife and the constant hum of birds chirping.

“We want to remain here without interruption from big corporations,” he told the governor’s council before its members filed into a big white church van. Laury drove them less than half a mile to the proposed compressor station site.

There, a large swath of land has been cleared because four Transco pipelines, which carry gas from Texas to New York City, already exist under the soil. The ACP would connect to one of the existing pipelines at the 55,000-horsepower compressor station, and transfer the fracked gas up the east coast.

To the left of the existing clear cut, just into the trees, is where Dominion would like to connect the ACP to the Transco line and build its aboveground compressor station.

Nothing can be built and no trees can be planted on the Transco pipeline corridor, according to Fjord, “which is why it is so galling to landowners to have their farmland seized on working farms, where it bisects the fields they grow, where their cattle graze.”

“No tractor or car can cross over one,” says Fjord. “Nothing. Yet, farmers in Buckingham will have to pay the same property taxes on the pipeline easements as if they were working farmland.”

Dominion spokesperson Aaron Ruby says once construction on the pipeline is completed, “the only restrictions on the use of the right of way are planting trees and building structures.”

Ann Loomis, Dominion Energy’s vice president of federal affairs, spoke at the governor’s council meeting. She noted that Dominion employs 42 county residents at its Bear Garden Power Station in Buckingham, and said Dominion is a member of the community.

University of Richmond professor of geography and the environment Mary Finley-Brook, who serves on the council’s pipeline subcommittee, gave a report on what her group has learned so far. She also said it does not recommend construction of the ACP.

If it gets built, Finley-Brook said residents can prepare for Dominion to make environmental violations because it already has a record, including several citations from when it started cutting down trees earlier this year. And “blowdowns,” or release of gas (and toxic air pollutants) to relieve pressure in the pipe, happen about 10 times per year at compressor station sites (a figure that Dominion estimates at once every five years). Finley-Brook also noted Dominion’s underreporting of the Union Hill population.

“This was, in my own professional opinion, not an accident,” she said. “This inaccurate information is a tactic that has been used successfully many times.”

The more rural and less densely populated an area is, the thinner the pipe is permitted to be, and fewer shut-off valves are required, she said.

As for the public health impact, she said, “Compressor stations make people sick.”

Pipeline opponent Suzanne Keller, a retired epidemiologist with the Virginia Department of Health, said Buckingham residents can expect around 350 tons of air pollutants to be released each year.

The crowd of about 50 people heard from Michael Dowd, a Department of Environmental Quality representative, who drew jeers when he said, “The community’s health will be protected.” He added, “I can’t guarantee that there won’t be accidents or events at the compressor station.”

But Dowd did make a promise: “The Buckingham compressor will be among the most, if not the most, stringently regulated compression stations in the country.”

There to give a personal testimony was Ray Kemble, a Dimock, Pennsylvania, resident in a Rolling Thunder motorcycle jacket who’s lived near six compressor stations for several years.

The small town of Dimock was featured in the 2010 documentary Gasland, which showed residents lighting their tap water on fire.

Kemble carried a bottle of water that he drew from his neighbor’s well. It was brown and swirled with oil when he shook it. Kemble said he’s been diagnosed with three types of cancer since the compressor stations were built, and he keeps oxygen tanks at his house, so when the air gets too noxious from blowdowns, he has clean oxygen to breathe. He said he often has to leave his home because the air quality is so bad.

Marie Gillespie. Courtesy photo

The council heard from Marie Gillespie, who lives on Union Hill Road adjacent to where Dominion has already cleared a strip of land for the ACP.

“I think I’m the first person who has been directly impacted by the pipeline and compressor station,” she said, describing hearing an awful noise in her backyard, rushing to get dressed and go outside to see the commotion. By the time she did, the trees were already gone.

“I was stricken,” she said. “I was heartbroken. …The stress has already started. Problems have already begun, and I don’t know where it’s going to end.”

Pastor Paul Wilson. Courtesy photo

Pastor Paul Wilson, who leads the Union Hill and Union Grove Baptist churches, also spoke.

“We are ground zero,” he said, and echoed a popular argument against the ACP. “This whole pipeline is based on false premises. Politicians were bought off, and this county had no choice but to say yes.”

Added Wilson, “We refuse to be the sacrificial lamb.”

And another commenter, through tears, and while banging her balled fist, said, “Nobody’s protecting us. Not a soul.” Her last remark drew enormous energy from the pipeline opponents in the room: “We are going to fight this fight. This is not a done deal.”

Updated June 6 at 3:50pm to correct the source of the data used in the FERC’s environmental impact statement and to include Dominion’s response to claims by Lakshmi Fjord and Mary Finley-Brook. 

Updated June 7 at 3:15 with the correct number of Transco pipelines that already exist in Buckingham County, and with the correct project in Charlottesville that was stopped by one slave burial site.