Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Jones
By Elizabeth Jones
I’m Sister Truth, also known as Elizabeth Jones. Five years ago I produced and hosted Community Wake Up Call, a radio show with my commentary on news and current events from the headlines. I believe that we can all make a difference for a better quality of life if we work together for that purpose. We all have a role to play.
I’m an educator, farm-owner, and community activist who ran for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates. I’m the daughter of sharecroppers who left the segregated South in 1945 because economic, social, and political justice didn’t exist for African Americans.
The many good people must take a more active role in how the government works. Voting and speaking out are important actions that everyone needs to value. Getting involved in our community will lead to better government services and a better place to live, work, and raise a family!
I’m back to wake you up to what’s happening and has been happening in our own backyards. The Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) LLC is seeking an air quality permit approval from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality for the Lambert Southgate Compressor Station to be operated in the Banister District of Pittsylvania County. Pipeline locations have been set aside through easements, land purchases, and eminent domain by the Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC.
But wait, the Transco-Williams Pipeline’s gas compressor stations have been in Chatham for over 50 years! If MVP LLC gets an air permit, there will be three gas compressor stations on Transco Road.
Our 98-year-old family farm has already been negatively affected by poisonous gas emissions from the existing gas compressor stations. MVP has held tough through community and landowner protests for nearly six years. They act as if counties in Virginia, North Carolina, and West Virginia don’t matter. The need and greed for more profits by these fossil fuel energy producers is all that matters to them. Our family farm has lost value and my husband Anderson’s Indigenous heritage has been stolen.
But why us? Why in my backyard? Why in Banister District which is a majority-minority election district steeped in Indigenous and African American cultural and historical significance. Do we not matter?
I’m the chair of the Pittsylvania County Branch NAACP Environmental Justice Committee and we’re in the struggle for environmental and climate change justice because it’s a civil rights issue that needs to be defended. Systemic racism is our enemy. The worst part of systemic racism is that you don’t know or understand how damaging it is until the damage is already done. African Americans in rural communities must become advocates for clean air and water and speak out against polluters poisoning our air, contaminating our water, and disturbing the land that provides life-sustaining ecosystems for all species, including human beings, endangered, and otherwise.
The proposed Lambert Compressor Station would have a negative impact on air quality, emitting carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, formaldehyde, and volatile organic compounds. These emissions are known to have harmful effects on human health at even small levels of exposure – including asthma, heart attacks, cancer, and diabetes.
There continues to be a lack of monitoring and reporting about air pollutants that reach our residents, but I’m going to do my best to keep you informed about this crisis. We must stop attempts to build more fossil fuel infrastructure in our community, or it will continue to be a pollution hotspot. We must have environmental justice.
And that’s the truth!