I started this blog with the intention of just sticking to my visits to NC state parks, and this is only my third post, but I honestly don’t think that protecting the beautiful state I’ve been exploring is going too far off-mission.

Tuesday afternoon, I heard the phrase “Atlantic Coast Pipeline” for the first time. Thursday night, I drove two hours to a public hearing and a “Drop-In Listening Session” in Roanoke Rapids, NC. Now I can barely think about anything else.

Before I go into the details of what I learned, here’s a summary: the pipeline is bad because:

It is unfair to citizens and vulnerable populations: they’re being asked to pay (with increased electricity bills for “infrastructure improvement”) for a pipeline that will not benefit them at all and instead saddle them with a risky project that will whisk the gas off overseas to make a profit for a corporation.

It endangers the environment and will give nothing back to the community.

It encourages fracking, doing PERMANENT damage to our country’s most precious natural resources (clean air and water) in exchange for temporary gain for massive energy conglomerates.

The rushed, misleading, and completely inaccessible Environmental Impact Survey is a travesty and must be withdrawn until an adequate survey can be conducted.

Anyway, back on Tuesday, I picked up on the fact that Atlantic Coast Pipeline LLC is planning to pipe fracked natural gas from West Virginia across North Carolina. ACP LLC is owned by Dominion and Duke Energy among others. This gas is intended for sale overseas (they like to say that it will be available to the residents of affected communities, but the tap-in cost for a county to get any of the gas is PROHIBITIVELY HIGH, especially for the impoverished counties along the planned route of the pipeline). It’s no surprise that I hadn’t heard much about the pipeline, because ACP LLC has been very careful to keep a low profile (only contacting the residents from whom they are attempting to acquire land, leaving their neighbors in the dark).



So the FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the group that supposedly prevents abuse, damage, and ill-considered pipelines) is holding hearings along the route of the pipeline to take public opinion. It’s supposed to make sure the pipeline doesn’t cause undue damage.



Prior to the Roanoke Rapids hearing, the Sierra Club Headwaters group and the Clean Water NC group were holding a meeting for concerned citizens. I decided to go to Roanoke Rapids and attend.



There were about thirty people at the “Peoples’ Hearing” which was held close to the Hilton where the official Federal Listening Session took place afterwards. The Peoples’ Hearing was set up by local citizen groups, the NAACP, Concerned Stewards of Halifax County, and Clean Water for NC. This is what we learned:



1) Prior to the FERC hearing, affected citizens were supposed to have had access to information about the pipeline project. What actually happened: not even two weeks ago ACP dumped an obtuse and inaccessible document, several thousand pages long.



2) It included a PEIS, a Prelimary Environmental Impact Survey which was highly misleading. For example, it claimed thousands of jobs will be created — but in small print it promised just 10,000 job hours – that’s 100 hours of work for 100 people! And once the project is completed, there will only be permanent 18 pipeline jobs in the entire state of North Carolina.



3) The EIC claims people of color and seniors will not be disproportionally affected, but the calculation is based on a per county basis. The original pipeline was supposed to go through Wake County, but figuring the people there would object loudly, APC LLC decided to re-route through poor counties. So they say the impacted landowners are not poorer than their (very poor) neighbors. Likewise they claim they won’t have a disproportionate impact on senior citizens or people of color because they chose counties which have a high percentage of elderly and black residents.



3) APC LLC does not inform neighbors, they only inform those whose land they want, so few people in the affected counties even know about the pipeline. We heard about the “land men” – lawyers who make a living getting land away from people. They threaten and take advantage of senior citizens and uninformed people who don’t know they don’t have to listen or allow them on the property.



4) APC LLC will pay upfront (not very well) for their easement, but in consequence of having a pipeline buried in your backyard your property value goes way down (who will buy your place at all?), you won’t be able to subdivide for your children.



5) APC LLC says one benefit of their project is that people along the way can tap into the pipeline, but in fact the tap cost and the cost of the gas itself will be ludicrously high. The US has a glut of fracked natural gas right now. This gas is intended for sale overseas.



6) Residents will actually be paying for this pipeline by way of rates raised by Duke Energy and Dominion to pay for “infrastructure.”



7) The residents, who see no benefit, will be on the hook when county disaster relief has to clean up after any accidents. The Environmental Impact Survey claims the pipeline will be clean and safe, but a) tests conducted at similar sites show high levels of formaldehyde and particulates that lead to lung disease, and b) in the past year there have been more explosions per pipeline than ever – giant conflagrations 6-7 days of flames.



8) Duke/Dominion plan to test only wells within 150 feet of pipeline itself, even though any disaster will affect the entire water table.



9) This does not happen on the state level, it’s county commissioners in charge. They are drooling over the supposed tax revenues projected to be $500,000 to $900,000 PRO-RATED OVER TEN YEARS. In the mean time they’ll have to pay for all the mess the project creates.





Anyway, after the meeting, we went to the Federal hearing at the local Hilton, which seemed to have been set up to suppress community action or press-worthy moments. Each of us got a number and went in to a room with an FERC official and a mic to give our statement.



The concluding request was that this PEIS be withdrawn and a clearer one submitted. Also, to VOTE in 2018, local elections will be very important.

What you can do: sadly, much of this is in the hands of the county commissioners of the counties that the pipeline will overrun (who have been described as “dazed by the money waved in front of them”) and the FERC, but you can sign this Sierra Club petition opposing the pipeline and this petition organized by the Clean Water for NC group, get a yard sign from frackfreenc.org, and support that organization as much as you can.