Pastor Paul Wilson of Union Grove Missionary Baptist Church, which is located in Union Hill, speaks at a press conference, August 2018. (Photo by William Davies)
January 29, 2020: Earlier this month, in a major environmental justice victory, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit vacated a permit for a proposed fracked-gas compressor station in the historic African American community of Union Hill, Virginia. Local residents have spent years fighting Atlantic Coast Pipeline's proposal to site this massive and polluting facility in their community, which was founded by freedmen and women after the Civil War.
Last year, Friends of Buckingham and Chesapeake Bay Foundation challenged the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board's decision to approve a permit for the compressor station. The Sierra Club, representing Union Grove Missionary Baptist Church, the Virginia State Conference NAACP, and other partners, submitted an amicus curiae brief with the court that highlighted the Board's failure to grapple with the environmental injustice of locating the compressor station in Union Hill.
The court agreed, writing that "environmental justice is not merely a box to be checked." Concluding that the Board "failed in its statutory duty to determine the character and degree of injury to the health of the Union Hill residents, and the suitability" of the polluting compressor in the community, the court threw out the permit.
As a result of legal challenges filed by the Sierra Club and our partners, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline also lacks valid approvals from the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.