Emily Sutton loves the Haw River, with its boulders and whitewater, perfect for rafting. The river\u2019s 110 miles flow through rural North Carolina, touching six counties in the state. But the Haw, which Sutton advocates for as its \u201criverkeeper\u201d with the Haw River Assembly, is also the backdrop of an ongoing battle against a proposed pipeline, which threatens the health of the river and those who enjoy it.<\/p>\n
Plans for the Mountain Valley pipeline were first announced in April 2018. The proposed pipeline would transport fracked gas\u00a0300 miles<\/a>\u00a0from West Virginia to a compressor site in southern Virginia, and then another 70 miles into northern North Carolina. This last section is called the Mountain Valley Southgate Extension, and it goes through the state to allow a major\u00a0stakeholder<\/a>\u00a0that already services nearly\u00a030% of counties<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0expand its market<\/a>. It is this section of the pipeline that would decimate the Haw River.<\/p>\n The pipeline was originally supposed to be completed in less than a year and cost financial partners\u00a0$3.5 billion<\/a>. But four years of coordinated cross-state grassroots resistance to the pipeline\u2019s construction has thus far prevented the Mountain Valley pipeline corporation from laying even an inch of pipeline in North Carolina soil. New county, city, and state laws have a far reach in preventing pipelines that are slated to start in one state and end in another, as seen with a\u00a0Virginia state law<\/a>\u00a0that impacts the North Carolina section of the pipeline.<\/p>\n With the project over budget and lacking necessary permits, one financial backer of the Mountain Valley pipeline corporation says it\u2019s\u00a0reconsidering<\/a>\u00a0its 31% investment in the now-$6.2 billion pipeline. The corporation is also facing an\u00a0$800 million<\/a>\u00a0impairment charge\u2014a financial term to describe when the value of a good or service drops below the cost to produce it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was determined that the continued legal and regulatory challenges have resulted in a very low probability of pipeline completion,\u201d the funder said in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing. That, along with the additional legal and financial hurdles the pipeline now has to overcome, is likely causing other investors to see the project as more of a financial risk, forcing them to reconsider their own stake.<\/p>\n And this cross-state collaboration is only one of many where people power is waging a concerted, and increasingly successful, campaign against fossil fuel corporations and the harmful extraction they promise. Pipeline corporations often rely on silence and intimidation\u2014social ills that splice communities and convince neighbors of their isolation from each other. But organizers in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Nebraska are proving that building collective community power can successfully counter Big Oil\u2019s moneyed interests.<\/p>\n Given that oil extraction in the U.S.\u00a0increased during the pandemic<\/a>\u00a0and that federal officials continue to\u00a0subsidize fossil fuels<\/a>\u00a0despite scientific warnings to stop their sale and combustion, it\u2019s clear to organizers that grassroots strategies are critical to fighting pipelines.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen a pipeline is proposed, [those impacted] either don\u2019t know about it until it\u2019s too late, or they don\u2019t have the access to the information or time to dedicate to showing up to all of these meetings and giving comments,\u201d Sutton says. When it came to the pipeline threatening the Haw River, though, she says that wasn\u2019t the case: \u201cWe really gave the power to the people who are impacted.\u201d<\/p>\n In many ways, pipeline fighting is a battle between narratives\u2014one of money versus people power\u2014and also one of priorities\u2014economic benefit in the short term versus generations of climate disaster. To understand the impending defeat of Southgate, it\u2019s important to realize that wins against pipelines don\u2019t occur in a vacuum; generational Appalachians in West Virginia have organized in tandem with water defenders and protectors in North Carolina. Organizers from different communities, even in different states, are stronger working together when they have a shared aim.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a blueprint, organizers say, of what to do when a pipeline threatens already vulnerable communities. The first step is to educate neighbors and those who care about the land. The second is to make the building process as legally untenable as possible by advocating for the passage of new city and county laws, demonstrating a pipeline\u2019s fallibility to state environmental agencies.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard to fight against major corporations when you don\u2019t have money,\u201d says Crystal Cavaliere, a member of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation. Cavaliere lives in Mebane, North Carolina, and is one of the main leaders working on the Southgate resistance efforts. She says organizers and impacted residents are made to feel like if they don\u2019t have money, they don\u2019t have power. Cavaliere\u2019s work is to disprove that hypothesis.<\/p>\n There are certainly immediate risks to the river\u2019s ecosystem: rerouting creeks with pipe, sediment pollution from construction, and gas leaks due to breakages in the line. But there\u2019s even more at stake. Within the Haw\u2019s watershed, the Southgate Extension would threaten 207 streams, three ponds, and 9 acres of wetlands, as well as more than 600,000 square feet surrounding a nearby watershed,\u00a0according to the state Department of Environmental Quality<\/a>. And these threaten the river\u2019s future as well as its past.<\/p>\n The word\u00a0haw<\/em>\u00a0means \u201criver\u201d in the language of the Sissipahaw, one of the Indigenous tribes that called the region home. \u201cThis river was the lifeblood for entire civilizations,\u201d says Sutton, with the Haw River Assembly, the nonprofit dedicated to advocacy and protection of its watershed. English settler-colonizers committed genocide against the Sissipahaw peoples; the river and its name remain a memory of their existence.<\/p>\n The river was also a site of the underground railroad during the period of legal enslavement of African Americans in the United States, according to the Assembly.<\/p>\n Even today, the Haw \u201cstill continues to be this connecting source from people in the triad, in Greensboro, all the way down to Jordan Lake and the triangle in North Carolina,\u201d Sutton says.<\/p>\n In late 2021, three years into the battle against the Mountain Valley Southgate Extension, organizers in North Carolina were beginning to lose hope. The state permitting process looked like it was going to allow the beginning stages of pipeline construction, portending an uphill climb of legal challenges for defenders of the Haw River.<\/p>\n But then, in the first week of December, organizers pushed the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board to\u00a0deny<\/a>\u00a0the permit required to build a pipeline compressor station, citing a 2020 Virginia\u00a0environmental justice law<\/a>\u00a0and the potential that the compressor station would contribute to ongoing environmental injustices faced by Black and Brown residents living near the site. The compressor is a key element connecting the mainline of the Mountain Valley pipeline to the extension through North Carolina. This forced the company to start the permitting process all over again and allowed organizers more time to rally impacted residents and lobby public officials.<\/p>\n A month later, in a\u00a0case<\/a>\u00a0brought by the Sierra Club, Appalachian Voices, and other environmental organizations, a federal appeals court overturned permits previously issued by two agencies, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, that would have allowed the mainline to devastate two species of endangered fish\u2014the Roanoke logperch and candy darter\u2014that live in the Jefferson National Forest, which straddles the West Virginia\u2013Virginia border.<\/p>\n Moreover, officials in North Carolina have\u00a0twice denied<\/a>\u00a0a necessary Water Quality Certification permit, mandated by the Clean Water Act, to the pipeline company. And as long as the mainline isn\u2019t built, there can be no Southgate Extension.<\/p>\n \u201cSouthgate doesn\u2019t have anything to stand on in North Carolina,\u201d Sutton says.<\/p>\n But these wins aren\u2019t the product of state and federal agencies deciding to do the right thing, she says. They\u2019re consequences of years of relationship building and storytelling by communities most likely to bear the brunt of pipeline construction and its ongoing devastation in the form of gas leaks, methane pollution, and water contamination\u2014the critical first step in the blueprint of pipeline resistance.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to stand up, you have to say no, and you got to start telling these people how you feel,\u201d Cavaliere says. By \u201cthese people,\u201d she means city and county officials, representatives from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and state agencies and boards tasked with evaluating permits filed by the construction company.<\/p>\n Along with other organizations fighting the extension\u2019s construction, Cavaliere coached landowners and other impacted residents in Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina to tell their personal stories in the few minutes allotted for public comment at meetings held by regulatory agencies and commissions charged with handing out permits. Cavaliere says she\u2019s working with tribal leaders and nations that steward land in what\u2019s known as South Carolina to prevent any future plans for pipeline construction.<\/p>\n \u201cWe use our traditional Indigenous values when we\u2019re organizing, so it is kind of slow,\u201d Cavaliere says. \u201cIt\u2019s just really about gaining people\u2019s trust.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n While fighting his own pipeline battle in Memphis, Tennessee, organizer Justin J. Pearson spent time in North Carolina with Cavaliere to swap strategies and speak at actions she had organized. From October 2020 through December 2021, Pearson led a grassroots resistance against the construction of the Byhalia Connection pipeline, which would have ravaged the majority-Black neighborhood of East Memphis. The proposed 49-mile pipeline was funded by a subsidiary of Valero and Plains All American Pipeline, billion-dollar corporations with vast legal and economic resources.<\/p>\n [slide-anything id=’3472166′]<\/p>\n Pearson\u2019s efforts focused on the second part of the pipeline resistance blueprint: passing preemptive local laws. \u201cThe only way you\u2019re gonna get legislation passed is with people power,\u201d Pearson says, explaining that the legislative process also serves as a means to educate constituents and policymakers who may not know the many threats pipelines pose. \u201cIt isn\u2019t enough to get things done; you have to have folks behind it and supportive of it to show politicians that it matters.\u201d<\/p>\n The 2021 passage of legislation protecting drinking water and residents\u2019 homes affirmed that the pipeline\u2019s construction company and financial backers would need the consent and participation of the people of Memphis if they wanted to build. In response, community members helped pass a countywide setback ordinance and two citywide ordinances\u2014one instituting a setback and another protecting the\u00a0Memphis Sand Aquifer<\/a>.<\/p>\nHow to Stop a Pipeline<\/h3>\n
Fighting for All People, and Their River<\/h3>\n
Learning From Successful Decades-Long Battles<\/h3>\n