Note, with the recent news from SCOTUS regarding the Mountain Valley Pipeline, it seemed time to re-up this story.
There have been a number of environmental justice fights in Appalachia, but few have united so many for so long across so much territory as the fight to stop the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast Pipelines. Both fights began in 2014, but while the Atlantic Coast Pipeline fight was over in 2020, the threat from the Mountain Valley Pipeline to water, communities, ecosystems and the planet is ongoing. Despite multiple permit denials, water violations, and accelerating citizen resistance, the effort to stop the project can seem like a game of “whack-a-mole” organizer Jessica Sims explains, “you've addressed something in one way and then it's up somewhere else.”
Jessica Sims is the Virginia Field Coordinator for Appalachian Voices. Born and raised in Virginia, she is a long time campaigner for the health and wellbeing in her community, which means attending to the problem of extractive industries that too often poison water, air, and destroy land and ecosystems. She worked with the community during the community-led resistance to the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, and works now on the effort to stop the Mountain Valley Pipeline, literally, for good. She shared a ‘story of two pipelines’ at the Climate Cafe Multifaith, explaining the projects and the community resistance to the projects.
Both pipelines were proposed in 2014. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline was a proposed 600 mile pipeline through three, possibly four states. The sheer scope of the pipeline galvanized the community county by county, town by town, along every stream and across the mountains. It intersected not just land and water, but communities and neighbors of all types, including members of the faith community. The pipeline united them to fight eminent domain, spoilage of water systems, destruction of forests, and preservation of regional heritage.
Jessica Sims tells a story of how people came alongside each other around the central threat, “neighbors who might not have known each other so well,” she said, started showing up together. Neighbors who didn’t necessarily agree, or even share “the same idea about certain things.” They showed up, and “these unexpected friendships happened. The Baptist community and the Yogaville community really teamed up together to help the Atlantic Coast Pipeline fight.”
New friendships and alliances grew between people of different faith traditions, as well as people with different histories and experiences. Black and Indigenous people were and are important leaders in the work, they shared their stories, their histories, their understanding of the land itself, and their determination to protect the communities they had built and that sustained them. They held rallies, staged protests, learned from each other, and built relationships. It was true community resistance, and it worked. Says Sims, “in July of 2020, much to the surprise of many—on July 5—the developers announced that they had canceled the [Atlantic Coast Pipeline] project.”
“…unexpected friendships happened. The Baptist community and the Yogaville community really teamed up together to help in the Atlantic Coast Pipeline fight.”
—Jessica Sims
Fighting the Atlantic Coast Pipeline took 6 years, but part of the success of community members—and what forged those bonds so deeply—was that pollution, resource exploitation, spills, and resulting illnesses were already all too well known to the people of Appalachia. For decades, the practice of mountaintop removal had destroyed waterways, habitats, and sent fine, dangerous particulates into the air. Says Sims, “You may be familiar with mountaintop removal. It's an extremely harmful way of mining for coal that involves explosives—blasting off the tops of mountains. …it's had a horrendous impact on the ecology of the regions where this happens.”
It was working to stop mountaintop removal mining, says Sims, that “brought Appalachian Voices into existence.” Coal in general has caused significant ecological and economic damage in Appalachia. Current and prior disputes have sparked from concerns over safe working conditions, fair wages, and environmental degradation. Every step of the mining process seems fraught with trouble, such as chemical spills, and unlined coal ash pits that leak poisons into the watershed.
Especially vulnerable are impoverished and marginalized communities, including Black and Indigenous groups who have been fighting back for years. This was a further concern for those who opposed the pipeline, especially when the route was revealed to seem to target these same communities.
Says Sims, “the Atlantic Coast Pipeline was a major standout for environmental injustice and environmental racism, based on where they decided to place their compressor stations and the route overall.” When the pipeline proposal launched, then, so did entire networks of folks who organized to say ‘no.’ Says Sims, “only through extreme political, public and continued pressure was that able to be achieved.”
Community resistance rose from “…this overarching idea of caring about your neighbor, which has been a really beautiful part of both fights.”
—Jessica Sims
As the people of Appalachia gain strength at rallies and hearings, the Mountain Valley Pipeline is proving to be an on-off and off-on again behemoth that—despite years of resistance, violations, and permit denials—just won’t die. This despite enormous consequences should it be completed. Explains Sims, “if it were to be operational, it's the equivalent of about 23 coal fired power plants or 19 million passenger vehicles in terms of emissions. So, water disaster in the present, and climate disaster if it were operational.”
As they did in the earlier fights, faith communities have been committed partners in the effort to stop the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Rev. Morris Fleischer is a United Methodist Pastor in Virginia whose church is in the blast zone, 35 yards from where the pipe would cross should construction be completed. “It's a killer kind of gas. So let's call it what it is. This is fracked methane gas,” says Rev. Fleischer, “it's this 800 pound gorilla in the room every day.” Rev. Fleischer remembers the day the developer started cutting down trees, “It happened on Good Friday…we had an interfaith service on that Sunday afternoon.”
There are stories of heartbreak and concern all along the unfinished route. Says Sims, “pipe has been sitting in folks’ yards for years degrading, taking on the sun and degrading the pipe coating. So there's additional concern about what they would be putting into the ground. And, when they do get it in the ground, the problem doesn't stop there because we're seeing increasingly landslides and pipe slippage.” It is these very problems that keep the community actively resisting, “they're protecting the people and places where they all live, and they all care about.” To Sims it is this “overarching idea of caring about your neighbor, which has been a really beautiful part of both fights.”
“It's really a project that is beleaguered, riddled with problems, and cannot be built safely …a project that is harmful to people, but is also harmful to all the species along the route.”
—Jessica Sims
Currently, the Mountain Valley Pipeline is perhaps 56% done. But restoration, and having to fix new and ongoing problems, means the true percentage is likely much less. Add the proposed Southgate pipeline extension and Lambert Compressor Station, and completion is still years away. It’s time, organizers believe, that the project be put to bed, permanently. It’s time to reroute resources toward cleaner energy that will enrich the lives of the people of Appalachia without the fear of spills, leaks, water contamination, or poisoned air.
Hope for this very outcome is growing. Says Sims, “it is a project which only grows in the scope of how many people know about it and want to fight to help stop it.” Many, many citizens in the affected areas are weary of the loss of land, degradation of water systems, and seek a better way. Says Sims, “We are very much invested in transitioning Appalachia to a new economy, one that is healthful and helpful for communities.”
Among those leading the defense is the Occaneechi people and Indigenous organizations such as 7 Directions of Service. Says Sims, “although the project has not been canceled, we are still achieving victories. The request for an air permit in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, near Danville, was rejected based on the project's potential disproportionate impacts to environmental justice communities.” Additionally, a group in Buckingham County is seeking Rights of Nature status for the James River. And, of course, the faith community is there, right alongside. Says Sims, “Virginia Interfaith Power and Light had a huge role in this fight, and continues to do so.”
The pipeline intersects and/or impacts watersheds across its route. In cities like Roanoke, Virginia, the pipeline, if completed, would cross the Roanoke River just upstream from the intake for the city’s drinking water.
With so many permits being denied—over and over again—the permitting process itself is now under fire. A key proponent of the Mountain Valley Pipeline project, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, is eager to attach permit reform to must-pass legislation, hoping to change the permit process so it is not an obstacle to construction. This legislation is viewed as a danger by organizers, as Senator Manchin’s pull in the Senate is considerable, and the Senator has spent his life—and earned his fortune—among fossil fuel interests.
For Sims and other organizers, this seems like an end-run around the communities who have already said ‘no’ to the project—over and over again. Part of her ongoing work is to try to communicate the experiences and value of the community voice to those in power, including Senator Manchin. Says Sims to the Senator, “We want you to meet people from these regions that are impacted by this. We want you to know what it means to them to have someone propose a project be written into law without the consent of the community.”
The long and short term impacts of the pipeline mean there is just too much at stake. Allen Johnson, of Christians for the Mountains, has fought extractive industrial pollution in Appalachia for decades. Johnson sees stopping the pipeline as not only a community imperative, but also a global one. “It's a national and world issue when we think about climate,” says Johnson. The pipeline, if built, would lock in decades more production of greenhouse gas. “They lock those things in and expect to use them for 30 years.”
This project persists, however, even when climate changes are becoming even more apparent. Virginia may not see catastrophic drought or the crop losses of other regions. But they are increasingly at risk for wet bulb temperatures, and Virginia’s Radio QI reported a study that showed increased risks for flash floods and landslides due to measurably heavier precipitation. It is not surprising, then, that people of faith are increasingly joining the call for a clean energy future—and to stop construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
The scientific consensus is clear that fossil fuel activity is causing climate change. Changing climactic conditions from record setting heatwaves to devastating drought and flood are now measurably attributed to human activities that release oil and gas emissions into the atmosphere.
Born and raised in Central Virginia, Jessica holds a lifelong passion for protecting Virginia’s waterways. Co-founder of Virginia Pipeline Resisters, she has volunteered extensively with local environmental non-profits and previously worked at the Sierra Club Virginia Chapter on their pipelines campaign. She is currently the Virginia Field Coordinator for Appalachian Voices, focused on the fight to stop new, harmful fossil fuel infrastructure including the Mountain Valley Pipeline and its Southgate extension. Her work also includes fighting other extractive industries, like large-scale metals mining, and she frequently uses the visual arts to communicate environmental issues.
Find this and more articles and video at the intersection of faith, climate change and climate justice here on substack, or on the Faiths4Future blog.
Rev. Richenda Fairhurst is here for the friendship and conversations about climate, community, and connection. She organizes the Climate Cafe Multifaith as a co-leader of Faiths4Future. Find her in real life in Southern Oregon, working as Steward of Creation with the nonprofit Circle Faith Future.