Through Snow and Rain, Tree Sitters Continue to Fight a Gas Pipeline

The protests, intended to slow down the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Virginia and West Virginia, are now in their second year.

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Near Yellow Finch Lane in Elliston, Virginia, several protesters work together to run a protest encampment through its second winter. The site includes platforms in trees, about 50 feet above ground on a steep hill.

“In the summer, the struggle is keeping our food cold enough so it doesn’t spoil. In the winter, it’s keeping it warm so it doesn’t freeze and trying to keep our water bottles from freezing. I sleep with a hot-water bottle every night to stay warm,” says one tree sitter, who requested to remain anonymous due to repeated attempts by the pipeline company to request court injunctions to forcibly remove protesters from the area.

Despite snow, rain, and regular freezing temperatures, protesters are maintaining the last remaining blockade along the construction path of the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Once completed, the 303-mile structure will transport up to two billion cubic feet of fracked natural gas daily from the Marcellus and Utica shale basins in northwestern West Virginia to southern Virginia. The pipeline was originally estimated to begin construction in mid-2017, with an estimated in-service date of late 2018.

Regulatory hurdles, lawsuits from various environmental organizations, and protests have delayed the pipeline’s estimated completion to the end of 2020, and costs have soared from an original $3.7 billion when construction began in early 2018 to current estimates of between $5.3 and $5.5 billion.

According to Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC, the pipeline is 80 percent completed. The entire project is currently under a stop work order issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in October 2019, over the pipeline’s compliance with the Endangered Species Act. The Roanoke logperch and candy darter fish, the Indiana bat, and the northern long-eared bat were cited by FERC as the endangered species potentially impacted by the pipeline construction.

Another pipeline project, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would run 600 miles from Virginia to North Carolina, is also facing significant delays and setbacks due to concerns for endangered species.

Over 40 people have been charged, and some have served jail time, for direct actions related to the tree sitting protests since early 2018.

One of those recently arrested for direct-action protests is 76-year-old grandmother Duff Benjamin, who chained herself to pipeline construction equipment in Elliston, Virginia, in September 2019.

“I was there for five hours. I stopped work for the day,” said Benjamin. “They shackled me. When I got off the crane, they took me to an EMT trailer, they said I was really dehydrated, and I asked for water and they said ‘no.’ They said ‘no’ to me all day long, the police said ‘no,’ so for many hours I had no water in heat and could have had a bad outcome.”

A spokesperson for the Virginia State Police did not comment on the water-withholding allegations. “Benjamin was taken before a Montgomery County magistrate who issued five misdemeanor counts,” said the spokesperson in an email. Charges include obstructing free passage of others, obstructing justice, trespassing, preventing the operation of a vehicle, and failure to obey order of conservator of the peace.

Benjamin’s court date is scheduled for January 13. She started a GoFundMe to raise funds for a defense attorney, as she relies solely on Social Security for income.

Though construction has ceased for the time being, the pipeline company continues maintenance and erosion control at the construction site across from the Yellow Finch blockade, where protesters remain to prevent trees from being cleared. Environmental groups continue to fight in court to delay the pipeline, with the ultimate goal of preventing its completion.

“Every day we occupy this hillside is another day they can’t continue the destructive path of this pipeline,” said Lucy, another tree sitter at the Yellow Finch blockade. “Corporations like the Mountain Valley Pipeline count on slowness of courts to get their work done before anyone has the means to put a stop to it. Without these tree sits, the progress of construction could have been completed or further along before the current stop work order was issued.”

Lucy spends every day at the camp chopping firewood, maintaining an outdoor kitchen, hauling gear up the steep slopes the camp is situated on, and sending up hot food to those in the tree platforms. The blockade’s resilience, according to Lucy, stems from the community at the blockade and a constant flow of support and food and supply donations from the local community.

Although weather is a challenge, with protesters wearing layers and keeping fires going to stay warm, Lucy argued that the weather is more challenging for the Mountain Valley Pipeline. The security forces the pipeline company tried to set up to monitor the blockade earlier this year lasted no longer than two weeks.

“They’re struggling to complete this project. Investors are putting caps on funding, they’re missing permits with no return dates, they’re over budget and behind schedule,” added Lucy. “We can be successful in stopping this pipeline, even if they won’t show they’re close to losing so investors aren’t deterred.”

Local environmental organizations have put on trainings for residents near the pipeline construction interested in citizen monitoring, such as the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, to supplement staff at the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.

“We’ve been doing vio-blitzes, where volunteers go out on a weekend along the pipeline route to document sediment and erosion control failures. What we’re seeing, especially on these really steep slopes, is their sediment and erosion control measures are constantly being overwhelmed with sediment on the site,” said Autumn Crowe, staff scientist with the West Virginia Rivers Coalition. “When the sediment enters the stream body, it can smother aquatic life in the stream bed, and it disrupts the whole food chain.”

The coalition continues to regularly hold “vio-blitzes” as they wait for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to make a decision on changes to stream crossing permits for the pipeline in West Virginia. The pipeline company is also awaiting a permit to be restored to continue the pipeline’s route through Jefferson National Forest.

A spokesperson for Mountain Valley Pipeline, Natalie Cox, did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.

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