Community Resistance in the South is Throwing a Major Wrench in Pipeline Plans

by Skyler Simmons / Earth First! Newswire

In the past week the West Virginia Department of Environmental Quality announced that it is rescinding the water quality permit for the Mountain Valley Pipeline to be built through their state, while North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper just announced that his DEQ will be delaying a decision on granting water quality permits for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline until December.

While neither of these decisions are the final death blow for these destructive pipeline projects, they do represent major victories for the grassroots efforts throughout the South to fight dirty energy projects. It is important to understand that these decisions did not come out of the goodness of the hearts of state governments. They came because strong social movements have forced them to do so.

These decisions came as activists coordinated multiple protests in VA and NC against the piplelines. In VA, protests were held at every Department of Environmental Quality office in the state, culminating in a blockade of the DEQ headquarters in Richmond resulting in 19 arrests. Meanwhile in NC, a group of activists are conducting a two week long fast in front of the DEQ headquarters in Raleigh and held a large rally on Sept 20th. A solidarity rally was also held at the DEQ office in Asheville, NC, the second protest there against the ACP  in a month.

Back in VA landowners along the Mountain Valley Pipeline route have been successful in using direct action to repeatedly keep pipeline surveyors off their land. Despite dirty tricks by the survey company, community members have been able to come together to block the paths of the surveyors, causing costly delays for the pipeline builders.

Both the Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley Pipelines would bring massive amounts of fracked gas from West Virginia into Virginia, with the ACP continuing into North Carolina. If built, the pipelines would result in greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to building dozens of new coal plants, or adding millions of new cars to the road. These pipelines aren’t dead yet, but if strong community organizing and direct action continue, they are likely not long for this world.

 

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