Photo by Caroline Hansley
According to Dominion Energy and other fossil fuel developers’ original plans, the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline should have been well on its way to carrying explosive, polluting fracked gas by now.
But developers underestimated the resistance to this dirty, dangerous project and the tenacity of communities to protect and defend themselves. The Sierra Club and our partners have worked alongside these communities to expose the reality that there is no safe way to build this unnecessary pipeline, and to ensure it doesn’t get built.
Just last week, Dominion announced it doesn’t expect the pipeline to be in operation until at least 2020, and that it will cost a minimum of $7 billion dollars -- two years later than originally proposed and more than $2 billion over budget, if it even gets built at all.
The ACP is just one of many unnecessary fracked gas projects that the fossil fuel industry has proposed in recent years, especially here in Appalachia and the Southeast -- a rush by industry to double down on their outdated business model at the expense of local communities. This is in blatant disregard of the facts: Energy demand isn’t growing so the gas isn’t needed, clean energy is a safer and more affordable option now, pipeline construction will destroy waterways and sensitive ecosystems, and pipeline developers take private property for this unnecessary pipeline, which would lock us into decades of dependence on climate-disrupting fracked gas, right when we can least afford it. We also can’t afford our utility bills skyrocketing to pay for pipelines as Dominion, Duke Energy, and other utilities pass the cost of construction onto customers without a choice.
The Atlantic Coast Pipeline is just one of many unnecessary fracked gas projects that the fossil fuel industry has proposed in recent years, especially in Appalachia and the Southeast.
To these ends, fossil developers have gamed the system in every way possible: Pressuring landowners to sign over their land, lobbying state and federal agencies to issue permits without following required protocol, disregarding the requests and input of impacted communities, and violating their own permits once they start construction. But the Sierra Club and our partners aren’t letting them get away with any of it.
In the courts we’ve challenged agencies for improperly issuing permits like those that would have allowed the ACP to cross the Blue Ridge Parkway, unlawfully destroy endangered species habitat, and cut through two national forests.
Also, the ACP is not the only pipeline in the Southeast facing such delays. The proposed 300-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline is also stalled, behind schedule, and over budget.
All of these milestones are testaments to communities’ resistance across towns, states, and regions. As the call to abandon the ACP grows stronger, the fight will continue until it’s won.
Join our Southerners Against Fracking team and help us stop these projects once and for all!
Photo by Grant Baldwin