Community Activists in Virginia Fight Gas Pipeline & Environmental Injustice
Community activists in Virginia are continuing their fight against a non-viral public health threat, E&E reports. The already-behind-schedule and over-budget Mountain Valley Pipeline would transport gas 303 miles from West Virginia to southern Virginia and potentially an additional 75 miles into North Carolina. A compressor station for that “Southgate Extension” would be located less than half a mile from two other similar facilities and local advocates say the pipeline’s developers have failed to prevent disproportionate harm from the compressor station on residents.
Last year, a federal appeals court blocked a similar compressor station for the now-defunct Atlantic Coast Pipeline for failing to account for the harm that the compressor’s pollution would inflict on the nearby mostly-Black Union Hill community. Elizabeth Jones and her husband Anderson, who live on land home to generations of Anderson’s Black and Native American ancestors and have already had a swath of their land seized for the Mountain Valley pipeline, hope to block it as well. “They have taken part of our century-old farmland,” Elizabeth said. “This so-called project has been doing nothing but undermining our property values, our health,” she added. “And we need to do something about it.”
Source: E&E $