The Atlantic Coast Pipeline
The Atlantic Coast Pipeline

Author: Janée K. Petersen

Publisher:

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13:

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Recent technological advances and advantageous political circumstances have prompted a heightened wave of natural gas extraction and transportation infrastructure across the Eastern United States. In 2014, Dominion Energy announced a new energy project, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP). The pipeline will transport `fracked' natural gas from Ohio and Pennsylvania across Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina. The ACP will pass through two national forests, private property, a popular ski resort, a yoga community, and an African American community in rural Buckingham County, Virginia, among others. Although construction of the ACP is begun, Dominion Energy, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), and other state officials face strong opposition from grassroots organizations. I explore this resistance by asking what fears and concerns opponents have about the pipeline's construction and analyze how these fears shape the type of mobilization occurring against the project. I use an environmental justice framework with an emphasis on procedural power to analyze how corporations disrupt communities and sensitive ecological areas along ACP's path, despite strong opposition from grassroots organizations. Semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and document analysis of public documents, news sources, YouTube videos, and Facebook posts were conducted. I argue that this project ignited a wide variety of concerns among opponents ranging from environmental degradation to the unjust use of eminent domain by a private company. Perhaps most notable is the location of the Buckingham compressor station near an African American community, which constitutes a distributive environmental injustice. These concerns sparked resistance including public protests, disruptions during official meetings, and "art-activism"..

Environmental justice concerns and the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline route in North Carolina
Environmental justice concerns and the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline route in North Carolina

Author: Sarah Wraight

Publisher: RTI Press

Published: 2018-03-22

Total Pages: 18

ISBN-13:

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This report describes publicly available data sets and quantitative analysis that local communities can use to evaluate environmental justice concerns associated with pipeline projects. We applied these data and analytical methods to two counties in North Carolina (Northampton and Robeson counties) that would be affected by the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP). We compared demographic and vulnerability characteristics of census blocks, census block groups, and census tracts that lie within 1 mile of the proposed pipeline route with corresponding census geographies that lie outside of the 1-mile zone. Finally, we present results of a county-level analysis of race and ethnicity data for the entire North Carolina segment of the proposed ACP route. Statistical analyses of race and ethnicity data (US Census Bureau) and Social Vulnerability Index scores (University of South Carolina’s Hazards & Vulnerability Research Institute) yielded evidence of significant differences between the areas crossed by the pipeline and reference geographies. No significant differences were found in our analyses of household income and cancer risk data.

Gaslight
Gaslight

Author: Jonathan Mingle

Publisher: Island Press

Published: 2024-05-16

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 1642832499

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Imagine one day you receive a letter in the mail that informs you that a large energy company is planning to build a massive pipeline through your property. That surveyors will be coming out soon. That they have the legal right to do so, whether you like it or not, because this project is in the “public interest”—because the pipeline will be carrying natural gas, the so-called “bridge fuel” that politicians on both sides of the aisle have been peddling for decades as the path to a clean, green energy future. This was the gist of the letter that Dominion Energy sent to thousands of residents living along the path of its proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline in 2014, setting off an epic, six-year battle that eventually led all the way to the Supreme Court. That struggle’s epicenter was in the mountains of Virginia, where communities stretching from the Blue Ridge foothills to the Shenandoah Valley and the Allegheny highlands became Dominion’s staunchest foes. On one side was an archetypal Goliath: a power company that commands billions of dollars, the votes of politicians, and the decisions of the federal government. On the other, an army of Davids: lawyers and farmers, conservationists and conservatives, scientists and nurses, innkeepers and lobbyists, families who farmed their land since before the Revolutionary War and those who were not allowed to until after the Civil War. At stake was not only the future of the communities that lay in the pipeline’s path but the future of American energy. Would the public be swayed by the industry’s decades-long public relations campaign to frame natural gas – a fossil fuel and itself a potent greenhouse gas – as a “solution” to climate change? Or would we recognize it as a methane bomb, capable of not only imperiling local property and upending people’s lives, but of pushing the planet further down the road towards climate chaos? Vivid and suspenseful, gut-wrenching and insightful, Gaslight is more than the chronicle of a turning point in American history. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the dark, overlooked story of America’s “favorite fossil fuel,” and the immense future stakes of the energy choices we face today.