CHURCHVILLE — Wendy Little was home alone last fall when a vehicle with Texas license plates came up the driveway of her property here in western Augusta County. She watched a man wearing a “big ol’ cowboy hat” get out and come to the front door.
She asked him if he was an agent for Dominion Transmission Inc., which had sought unsuccessfully to get permission from Little and her husband, William, to come onto their 5-acre parcel to survey for the potential route of a supersized, high-pressure natural gas pipeline proposed through the county from West Virginia to southeastern Virginia and North Carolina.
She told him — again — they wouldn’t allow the pipeline surveyors on their land.
“He threatened court and I said, ‘Fine, we’ll be happy to see you there,’ ” she said.
The Littles are at the center of a legal confrontation that marks the beginning of a widening political battle over the proposed 554-mile, $5 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline and its potential effects on some of the most scenic and environmentally sensitive areas of Virginia, as well as the rights of property owners in its path.
They are both defendants and plaintiffs in parallel legal disputes over a 10-year-old state law that allows natural gas companies to enter private property to survey potential pipeline routes without landowner permission.
Dominion has begun the process of enforcing the statute against 56 landowners in Augusta and 122 in Nelson County, with 27 lawsuits filed already in Augusta and 20 in Nelson against property owners who have refused access to their land.
But the Littles and five landowners in Nelson have struck back with two lawsuits pending in federal court to challenge the constitutionality of the law. A federal judge in Harrisonburg will consider Dominion’s motions to dismiss the suits in separate hearings in February, but the bigger battle lies ahead as the partnership behind the pipeline seeks a federal certificate of need that would allow it to ultimately condemn property under eminent domain to build the project.
“For any property owner, it’s hard to separate environmental issues from property-rights issues — your property is your environment,” said retired Air Force Col. Charlotte Rea, owner of nearly 30 acres along the North Fork of the Rockfish River near Afton and a plaintiff in the federal suit by Nelson landowners.
Property rights emerge as powerful issue in pipeline’s path
Charlotte Rea came back to the Blue Ridge Mountains to “find some peace” after 26 years in the U.S. Air Force, from which she retired as a colonel in 2002.
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Nelson and Augusta have become the principal battlegrounds in the political debate, which has prompted thousands of anti-pipeline signs to sprout along roads and driveways, the sides of barns, and even hay bales in the two scenic counties on either side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Bluegrass performers Robin and Linda Williams, whose Middlebrook home was near a now-abandoned early route through Augusta, have written a song to protest the project.
Dominion, parent of Dominion Virginia Power, the state’s largest electric utility, calls the Atlantic Coast Pipeline essential to replace coal-fired power plants with cleaner-burning natural gas facilities in Virginia and North Carolina in the face of more stringent federal limits on air pollutants and concerns about global warming, and to provide energy for economic development projects and communities along the growing Atlantic coast.
“If we have the responsibility of keeping the lights on and we’re shutting down coal stations, the only option you have in the short term is natural gas stations,” said Dominion spokesman James W. Norvelle, who cited existing or new gas-fired plants in Brunswick, Buckingham, Warren and Fluvanna counties that the pipeline would supply.
The proposed 42-inch pipeline would be the largest in Virginia or ever constructed by Dominion — the lead partner in a joint venture with Duke Energy and Piedmont Natural Gas in North Carolina, and AGL Resources, an Atlanta company that owns Virginia Natural Gas in Hampton Roads. Dominion and Duke own 85 percent of the pipeline limited liability company.
“As far as Dominion, this is definitely a new project for us, a lot of firsts,” said Bill Scarpinato, manager of environmental business support-gas.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe called the pipeline “a game changer” in announcing the project in September with Dominion CEO Thomas F. Farrell II. The governor’s biggest political adversary in the General Assembly, House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, quickly followed with his own endorsement.
The governor’s embrace of the project was a blow to environmental advocates who had supported his election in 2013 and are looking to state environmental agencies to protect sensitive resources.
“He sent out a message to his agencies that ‘You are sticking your neck out by raising concerns with this project,’” said Rick Webb, a retired environmental scientist at the University of Virginia and a resident of Highland County, one of 10 Virginia counties in the pipeline’s path.
Webb is coordinator of the Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition, which is among about 30 organizations in the Allegheny Blue Ridge Alliance that have united in opposition to the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.
His coalition vows to produce detailed case studies of the potential damage to sensitive environmental features and habitats, and to aggressively monitor the construction of any pipeline, by land and air, using four private planes in its “pipeline air force.”
“We plan to do extensive surveillance of the project from the very beginning,” said Webb, citing a dozen violations of West Virginia environmental regulations at pipelines Dominion built there.
The violations — primarily slope failures that caused sediment to slide into creeks — resulted in a consent order and a $55,000 fine in October against the company, which has acknowledged its failures and promised not to repeat them in the new pipeline project.
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The Atlantic Coast Pipeline is one of three 42-inch pipelines proposed through western Virginia from the Marcellus shale fields in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania that are fueling a surge in domestic energy production through horizontal drilling and fracturing techniques known as “fracking.”
Environmentalists cheered the decision by the U.S. Forest Service in November to prohibit fracking in the George Washington National Forest except on existing gas leases and private mineral rights that total 177,000 acres of the 1.1 million acres of sensitive forest lands in the Allegheny Mountains.
But they are horrified by the prospect of multiple 42-inch pipelines crossing some of the steepest and most sensitive terrain in Virginia.
The Atlantic Coast Pipeline alone would cut through about 30 miles in two national forests; traverse more than 20 high mountain ridges in the Allegheny and Blue Ridge ranges; cross sensitive trout streams, wetlands and animal habitat; and pass through the complex karst geological formations that store water for wells and springs in the farm-rich Shenandoah Valley.
“We are very worried about our water supply, both the quality and the quantity,” said Tracy C. Pyles Jr., a member of the Augusta Board of Supervisors and the county service authority, which operates 12 well-fed water systems across the nearly 1,000-square-mile county.
Water is a crucial issue for Staunton as well as surrounding Augusta, which contains the headwaters for tributaries of the James, Shenandoah and Potomac rivers.
“We’re the only county in the state where no water flows in — it all flows out,” said Nancy Taylor Sorrells, a former member of the Board of Supervisors who is co-chairman of the Augusta County Alliance and a member of the service authority board.
The service authority has raised concerns about routing the pipeline near its wells or groundwater recharge areas, which generate drinking water for about 40,000 Augusta residents.
Staunton, which relies on water from the North River in the George Washington National Forest and major springs near the pipeline’s possible path, has adopted a resolution of opposition, as has Nelson County.
Concerns also have been raised by the Headwaters Soil and Water Conservation District in Verona and the Thomas Jefferson Soil and Water District in Charlottesville, where the memories of fatal landslides in Nelson from the remnants of Hurricane Camille remain fresh 45 years later.
The Augusta Board of Supervisors already has initiated a comprehensive rezoning process to consider the potential effects of the proposed pipeline, even though the county has no jurisdiction over the interstate project and Dominion has declined to participate in what it calls a “mock rezoning.”
The Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley pipelines already have pre-filed applications at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, which has the authority to determine whether a proposed pipeline would meet a public need and whether its route is acceptable after conducting an environmental impact assessment.
A third project, the Western Marcellus pipeline, is being developed by Transcontinental Gas Pipeline Co., which already operates a smaller interstate natural gas pipeline that runs through Virginia from the Gulf Coast to New York.
“I think a pipeline will be built,” said Webb, the retired U.Va. environmental scientist. “It’s a question of which one will be approved and are all three needed. We don’t really have a way to assess that — they’re all in competition with one another.”
The potential for bundling more than one pipeline into a single route — as suggested by a FERC environmental project manager for the Mountain Valley Pipeline proposal — already has been rejected by Dominion in a route analysis that considers and dismisses a series of alternatives.
“The route we’re looking at satisfies the needs of the people paying for the pipeline,” said Norvelle, who said the company examined more than 3,000 miles of potential routes to serve customers for the natural gas.
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Opponents argue that Dominion should route more of the pipeline along existing utility and road rights of way, which currently account for only 4 percent of the 300-foot-wide study corridor on the 554-mile route.
“They can do it, but they won’t,” said William Little, a Staunton native and lawyer who is being aided by Richmond attorney Nicholas A. Hurston in his lawsuit. “It’s all about money. … Their profit is my loss.”
Dominion said its ability to build the pipeline on existing rights of way is limited by terrain, which is different for an underground pipeline than an electric transmission line. “When there are opportunities to co-locate, we do take advantage of them,” said Scarpinato, the Dominion manager of environmental business support-gas.
The project faces different challenges in eastern Augusta, where it passes along the county landfill, with its extensive gas and groundwater monitoring wells and a trio of schools in Stuarts Draft.
“It doesn’t make sense to put it right through where the schools are,” said Josh Powell, 11, a sixth-grader at Stuarts Draft Middle School.
The proposed route also would go through property owned by Josh’s father, Fred Powell Jr., and grandfather, Fred Powell Sr., and then cross Hall School Road through the property of Al Boxley, a member of the county economic development authority who opposes the project because of its potential damage to wetlands and the hydrology of the South River.
The Powells and Boxley also say the project will take land in the area that has been designated for economic development without contributing significantly to the county’s economy.
A 30-inch Columbia Gas pipeline already passes through Boxley’s 450-acre farm, near one of the hundreds of sinkholes that pock the county, but it can be tapped by local businesses for energy, said Fred Powell Jr. “That pipeline serves the people of the community,” he said.
Dominion said the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline could be tapped for large industrial or wholesale customers but not residences and small businesses because it is highly pressurized.
“That’s not hard,” said Dennis T. Avery, an agricultural economist and writer who lives near Churchville and supports the project for the industry and jobs it could create in Augusta.
“Pipelines make enormous good sense, and we happen to be in the path of one,” said Avery, who has written extensively about global warming and cooling cycles that he considers generally independent of human sources of pollution.
Dominion said it will propose a specific pipeline route in its formal application to FERC this year, after trying to balance competing interests and concerns — from protecting the McDowell Civil War battlefield as the pipeline crosses the Allegheny range at Shenandoah Mountain to avoiding schools, wells and endangered species.
The company already has shifted the route through Augusta once to avoid the habitat of the cow-knob salamander in the national forest.
The company believes the pipeline can be built safely through karst formations, but it has hired a consultant to examine the geological issues in the karst areas of Augusta and Highland counties and in Pocahontas County, W.Va.
It also has retained Robert Burnley, former director of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, as an environmental adviser but declined a request by the Richmond Times-Dispatch to interview him.
Dominion also said it would continue to meet with the Augusta County Service Authority to discuss the concerns raised by the authority’s consultant. Ken Fanfoni, the authority’s executive director, welcomed the dialogue but added, “We want answers to those questions.”