The pink ribbons start in northern West Virginia. Tied to flimsy wooden posts stuck a few inches into the earth, they’re easy to miss as they whip in the crisp, fall wind. Heading south, they dot landscapes for 600 miles, marking the proposed route of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. They pass over cave systems and watersheds, climb up and down densely forested Appalachian slopes. They stamp quiet hollers and hillside family cemeteries. They divide historic African American communities and indigenous land.

The route stretches from the Marcellus Shale region of West Virginia, through Virginia, to southern North Carolina — though the energy companies behind the pipeline have floated the idea of extending it into South Carolina. If completed, the hundreds of miles of 42- and 36-inch diameter steel would carry 1.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas every day — enough to power 5 million homes daily. Three compressor stations along the route would help transport the gas, and, like much of the pipeline, would be built in lower-income, rural communities, bypassing more affluent property owners.

The project is part of a pipeline boom in the United States prompted by the fossil fuel industry’s shift from a fuel source on the decline, coal, to one on the rise, natural gas. Dominion Energy owns the majority share of the project, which was first proposed in 2014. Some of the most powerful utilities in the Southern U.S. — Duke Energy and Southern Company — own the rest. Those utility companies are also the wholesalers that would profit by reselling the gas to their ratepayers. The companies say the project is necessary because they and other utilities serving Virginia and North Carolina need cheaper gas. And they claim it would be an economic boon to the region, estimating that it would provide 17,000 construction jobs and generate $28 million each year total in property taxes for the 25 counties and two cities it will pass through.

But economists, environmentalists, researchers, and many residents in the places the pipeline would pass through say the project’s risks and costs outweigh its potential short-term benefits.

The promise of employment, for example, doesn’t shake out: Most of the pipeline’s construction jobs are highly specialized, so many of the workers have come from out of state. Dominion spokesperson Samantha Norris said that once the pipeline is operational, “a few dozen inspectors and technicians” will be employed to maintain it.

Further, the utility companies seem to be overstating regional demand: In Dominion’s most recent long-term energy plan, most scenarios showed no increase in regional consumption through 2033. Instead, the U.S. is expected to be a leading exporter of natural gas within five years. Some opponents suspect that much of the gas carried by the Atlantic Coast Pipeline would be shipped overseas.

Meanwhile, the project’s environmental threats are stacking up. Scientists warned during its environmental impact assessment that the mountainous terrain the pipeline would run through is unstable in spots. Where construction has begun, there have already been problems with erosion and sedimentation. There are also risks of natural gas leaks and explosions that could endanger nearby communities and contaminate drinking water supplies and wildlife habitats. And the concern over emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane from natural gas extraction is only growing as global temperatures rise and countries and states work to address climate change.

For years, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline has faced intense scrutiny for receiving expedited approvals from government officials without sufficient oversight. In 2017, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, known as FERC, approved the overall project. The Department of Transportation oversees safety regulations on how interstate pipelines are constructed, tested, and inspected once they’re in the ground, said Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, a Washington-based organization that advocates for pipeline safety regulations. But populated areas receive the lion’s share of the regulations. Federal rules are more lax in rural areas, he said — and all of the areas the pipeline would pass through are considered rural.

“It’s cheaper to build in rural areas — they don’t have to worry about added regulations when they do that,” Weimer said. “But if there’s a pipe next to your house that blows up, you’re gonna be just as dead as someone in a populated area.”

Originally scheduled to be in service this year, the project is tangled up in legal battles, and construction is less than 6 percent complete, in terms of miles of pipe in the ground. Despite the setbacks, Dominion remains confident that the pipeline will be up and running by late 2021. According to Norris, the Dominion spokesperson, developers have “extensively surveyed the route of the pipeline to identify and avoid the most sensitive areas and have made over 300 adjustments to avoid public and private water supplies, streams and rivers, wetlands, forested areas, historically or culturally sensitive sites, as well as individual landowner requests.” She said that in light of the 150,000 pages of environmental reports and 75,000 public comments generated throughout the process, the pipeline had the “most thorough and rigorous review of any project in our region’s history.”

“In the end, all agencies reached the same conclusion,” Norris said. “This is in the public’s best interest.”

The courts, however, are calling that conclusion into question. Over the past three years, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, LLC, has sued landowners in multiple states citing eminent domain, a body of law that governments — and, increasingly, energy companies — use to seize private property that they claim is for public benefit. These cases are still pending but lower courts have stalled the process.

The Southern Environmental Law Center, or SELC, has challenged multiple permits for the project since the beginning — and won. The most important victory came in December 2018, when the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the U.S. Forest Service violated federal law when it approved the pipeline to cross the Appalachian Trail, managed by the National Park Service, as well as Forest Service land. The ruling canceled the permit and halted construction.

Earlier this year, Dominion appealed the ruling on the Appalachian Trail crossing to the Supreme Court. In October, the Supreme Court decided to take Dominion’s case, and will hear oral arguments in February.

“The Forest Service has never done this before. There is no existing pipeline that crosses national forest land under this statute,” said D.J. Gerken, SELC’s program director. “If they affirm [the lower court’s ruling], there are big consequences for this pipeline, like being rerouted at the very least.”

After the Supreme Court issues its ruling, the D.C. circuit court will hear SELC’s challenge to FERC’s 2017 approval of the pipeline.

Over the past year, I’ve followed the path of the ribbons from West Virginia to North Carolina. I hiked along steep ridges where they were tied to trees; trudged through muddy cattle farms where they were stuck on fence posts. I drove past them as the route curved around churches and homes.

Along the way, I spoke to more than 20 people who lived on or near the proposed route, in addition to scientists, activists, lawyers, and government officials. In some places, I learned that the Atlantic Coast Pipeline has pitted neighbor against neighbor and sibling against sibling, that it has split church communities and broken friendships. In others, I found that it inspired folks to speak out at county meetings, to read every line in an environmental assessment, and to organize protests with strangers who became close friends.

Here are a few stories about some of the humans, wildlife, and places in the pipeline’s path.

Upshur County, West Virginia

For more than a century, Appalachia has relied on the coal industry, which brought well-paying jobs but left degraded ecosystems and communities in its wake. The coal industry’s sharp decline over the past decade, driven by cheaper natural gas and renewables, has left many central Appalachian counties with some of the highest rates of unemployment and poverty in the country.

“Historically, natural resource extraction has suffered an economic boom-bust cycle,” said Patrick McGinley, an environmental law professor at West Virginia University. “Local communities benefit to some degree, but they also suffer.”

Steven Johnson

Activists, former miners, and community leaders have long worked to diversify the region’s economy through agriculture, outdoor recreation, renewable energy, and the arts. But the fossil fuel industry has its own plan: natural gas, the most recent iteration of this extractive economy pitched to local officials and communities as an economic silver bullet.

Upshur County sits in the Marcellus Shale region of West Virginia, where eight major pipeline projects are in some stage of construction. Formerly a heavy coal-producing county with just over 24,000 residents, Upshur has a poverty rate of roughly 23 percent — nearly double the national rate. In an effort to attract more industry, county officials endorsed 22 miles of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline in 2017 to run through Upshur in exchange for a promised $2 million in tax revenue per year and hundreds of new jobs. Similar deals occurred all the way down the route, mostly in areas with high poverty rates; ultimately, Dominion and Duke garnered support from most counties along the route.