For those involved in the six-year-long struggle to stop the unneeded and destructive Atlantic Coast Pipeline, it is still hard to comprehend what happened on July 5, 2020. That is the day that Dominion announced that it was pulling the plug on the 42-inch high-pressure natural gas pipeline that would have plowed through 600 miles of forests, farms, streams, and communities in West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina.
If you missed our virtual Farewell (to the ACP) Party to celebrate all of you who never gave up, you can watch the recording here. We’ll have a big party one day when we can hug each other and high five again, but this was a good start to celebrating the amazing feat. You can also view the photo slideshow to the tune of Robin and Linda Williams’ “We Don’t Want Your Pipeline” with a brand-new final verse (also above). Warning, it will get stuck in your head, but that’s a good thing!
It is important to remember the grassroots work and the legal brilliance of those who successfully brought down Goliath. Myriad plans are underway to do just that, with the most immediate being an archiving project led by the Friends of Nelson, in partnership with Alliance for the Shenandoah Valley and others.
Friends of Nelson is undertaking the task of archiving documents, photos, and other materials that have been amassed over the past six years by those engaged in the successful fight against the ACP, particularly in the Nelson-Augusta region. The purpose is both to preserve the story of the grassroots struggle and to create a body of information that will prove useful to other citizen groups fighting similar battles.
And hot of the press is Robert Whitescarver’s Four Factors That Led to the Defeat of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, an educational guide that helps engage folks in discussing environmental activism. The book not only defines what activism, civil disobedience, and environmental justice are but describes how we used them to defeat the pipeline.
We’d be remiss in closing this post without mentioning that our friends to the south are still fighting an equally destructive Mountain Valley Pipeline. To join their fight, visit POWHR to connect with the coalition of organizations still in that battle.