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Pipelines

At Dominion Shareholder Meeting, Pipeline Opponents Address CEO Directly In What’s Become An Annual Airing Of Grievances

Opponents of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline have organized dozens of meetings, protests and marches in an effort to stop the project since it was announced in 2014. But there’s just one time a year they’re guaranteed an audience with the pipeline’s lead developer, Dominion Energy, as well as its CEO, Thomas F. Farrell II: the company’s annual shareholder meeting, where anyone who owns stock in the company or is representing someone who does is entitled to take to the microphone and unload for a few minutes. And this year, Wednesday was the big day.  “Mr. Farrell, do you feel Dominion’s profits are more important than people’s lives and the planet?” asked Deborah Kushner, a resident of Nelson County who lives near the proposed path of the pipeline — one of about 10 pipeline opponents who traveled to Richmond to address Farrell in person.

Chiefs From 133 First Nations Join Fight Against Kinder Morgan Pipeline And Oilsands Expansion

The organization representing First Nations in Ontario has joined a nationwide treaty alliance calling for a ban on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and other fossil fuel projects. The Chiefs of Ontario, which represents 133 First Nations across the province, lent its support to the Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion, in a May 2 letter of support signed by Ontario Regional Chief Isadore Day. “The Chiefs of Ontario agree to the immediacy of building a more sustainable future so our children do not have to rely or be exposed to fossil fuels which pollute and destroy the earth, air, and waters,” Day wrote in the letter, obtained by National Observer. The oilsands, deposits of a tar-like heavy oil mixed with clay beneath the boreal forest in Alberta and Saskatchewan, represent the third largest reserve of crude oil in the world after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

Woman, Daughter Who Protested In Trees On Planned Pipeline Land Come Down

ROANOKE COUNTY, Va. - After more than a month sitting in trees protesting the Mountain Valley pipeline, Theresa "Red" Terry and her daughter, Minor, finally came down Saturday. It happened a day after a federal judge decided on fines and set a deadline, ordering them to come down. "Walked down the ladder right behind me, knowing that I smelled like I'd been up there a while. That's incredible, and he didn't fall," Terry, 61, said, joking after more than a month making a serious statement. She and her daughter had been up in trees protesting the construction of the Mountain Valley pipeline since April 2 until a dramatic change of events Friday. A judge ruled if they didn't come down by Saturday night, they'd face fines of $1,000 a day. And if they stayed past Thursday, U.S. marshals could arrest them using "reasonable force."

State Court Declares Bayou Bridge Pipeline’s Coastal Use Permit Illegal

Louisiana’s 23rd Judicial District Court has ruled that the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources(DNR) violated the Coastal Use Guidelines when it issued Bayou Bridge Pipeline, LLC a Coastal Use Permit, allowing the company to construct and operate a crude oil pipeline through Louisiana’s Coastal Zone. The court ruled in favor of the Petitioners in the case, Pastor Harry Joseph, Genevieve Butler, H.E.L.P. association, the Gulf Restoration Network, the Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, and Bold Louisiana, who argued that the DNR illegally failed to apply critical regulations under the Coastal Use Guidelines and failed to meet the agency’s duty as public trustee over the natural resources of the state. The Petitioners are represented by the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic.

Enbridge Fined For Failing To Fully Inspect Pipelines After Kalamazoo Oil Spill

The Canadian oil pipeline company responsible for one of the largest inland oil spills on record has agreed to pay a $1.8 million fine for failing to thoroughly inspect its pipelines for weaknesses as required under a 2016 agreement. Federal officials say Enbridge, Inc., did not carry out timely and thorough inspections on one of its pipeline systems, as it had agreed to do as part of a consent decree reached with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Justice. The 2016 settlement stemmed from a massive 2010 oil spill into Michigan's Kalamazoo River. The spill required years and more than a billion dollars to clean up, and it highlighted the hazards of pumping heavy tar sands oil through pipelines. More than 1 million gallons of tar sands oil spilled into the Kalamazoo River near the town of Marshall when a 6-foot rupture opened in Enbridge pipeline 6B.

Local Doctors Turned Away From Pipeline Protesters

Two Charlottesville doctors seeking to help a 61-year-old woman who has spent four weeks perched in a tree to halt construction of the Mountain View Pipeline say Roanoke County authorities did not permit them to provide her with medical supplies on Saturday. With a hearing in federal court scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, the family of Theresa “Red” Terry and her daughter, Theresa Minor Terry, 30, are anxiously waiting for a resolution to the ongoing standoff on property that’s been owned by their family for seven generations. In an interview Monday, Dr. Greg Gelburd, of Downtown Family Health Care, said he and Dr. Paige Perriello, with Pediatric Associates of Charlottesville, visited Bent Mountain in Roanoke County over the weekend to assess the mother and daughter’s medical condition.  

The Tree Sitters: Activists Have Halted Pipeline Construction

You can find Red by the campfire smoke and bright yellow crime-scene tape. Red is a 61-year-old Virginia mountain woman who since April 2 has been living in a tree inside the white-and-blue-taped corridor marked out for the interstate Mountain Valley Pipeline. She and her 30-year-old daughter Minor, who is stationed in another tree not far away, are defending their land against what they see as a looming environmental catastrophe. To get to Red’s tree sit, you’ve got to cross wooden boards that cross Bottom Creek numerous times. Water flows all around you, supporting wetland vegetation like skunk cabbage across the property, where the Terry family has lived for seven generations. A judge ruled on Jan. 31, however, that the company may use eminent domain to take land along the pipeline’s 303-mile route from northern West Virginia to southern Virginia.

A Young Tree Sitter Starves In A Tent 50 Feet High To Stop A Pipeline

When a young girl got up in a monopod tent with limited food to prevent construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) back in March, she had no idea the movement her action would spark. A 61 year-old woman, “Red” Terry, would soon join the effort by climbing her own tree and making national news as police denied her food and water. Last Saturday, “Red” Terry told Police at the base of her maple tree that she was running out of food. Law enforcement looked back up at the 61-year old woman in her treehouse and said they would give her what she needed. They gave her stale cookies and a sandwich. Then law enforcement taped a piece of paper to her tree saying, “You should vacate immediately. I am posting a copy of the order on this tree.”

For 15 Years, Energy Transfer Partners Pipelines Leaked An Average Of Once Every 11 Days

5,475 days, 527 pipeline spills: that's the math presented in a new report from environmental groups Greenpeace USA and the Waterkeeper Alliance examining pipelines involving Dakota Access builder Energy Transfer Partners (ETP). It's based on public data from 2002 to 2017. All told, those leaks released 3.6 million gallons of hazardous liquids, including 2.8 million gallons of crude oil, according to data collected from the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). That doesn't include an additional 2.4 million gallons of “drilling fluids, sediment, and industrial waste” leaked during ETP's construction of two pipelines in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. Also left out: air pollution and leaks from natural gas pipelines, which were beyond the scope of the new report but which play a significant role in climate change and can cause explosions.

Environmental Justice As Liberation: No Consent, No Pipeline, No Kinder Morgan.

Kinder Morgan, a Texas-based energy giant, seeks to build a pipeline from Northern Alberta through British Columbia to the densely populated suburb of Metro Vancouver where it would be loaded onto tankers and sent through the region’s coastal waters. To say that there is opposition to their plans would be an understatement: the pipeline project is opposed by the province of British Columbia, the state of Washington, the city of Vancouver and 21 others, 250,000 petition signers, more than 24,000 who have vowed to do “whatever it takes” to stop it, and 107 of the 140 Nations, Tribes, and Bands along the route. As such, the forces of the fossil fuel industry are bearing down on British Columbia as an eight-year campaign to stop the pipeline comes to a head.

State Appeals Court Rules Valve Turners Can Proceed With Necessity Defense For Pipeline Protest

In a victory for activists who shut down a tar sands pipeline as part of a multi-state protest in 2016, a Minnesota appeals court has ruled that the "valve turners" can present a defense that their action was necessary because of the threat that fossil fuel production poses to the planet. On Monday, the Minnesota Court of Appeals issued a 2-1 decision (pdf) upholding a district judge's October ruling that Annette Klapstein, Emily Nesbitt Johnston, Steven Liptay, and Benjamin Joldersma can present a "necessity defense" for participating in the #ShutItDown action, which temporarily disabled all tar sands pipelines crossing the U.S.-Canada border. State prosecuters had challenged last year's ruling, claiming that such a defense would jeopardize the likelihood of a successful prosecution and "unnecessarily confuse the jury."

“Red Terry” Takes A Stand – “I Will Come Out Of The Tree When These People Get Off My Land”

Excellent video (by Water Is Life. Protect It.; see below), I definitely recommend it. As a property owner on Bent Mountain puts it, “I think that’s one of the big issues with this pipeline is that the rest of the public that is not in this community up here, a good chunk of them don’t think it’s going to affect them, it’s not in my backyard, but it is – it IS your backyard, we are what feed a lot of the clean, crisp water that Roanoke city gets.” And as the treesitter known as “Red Terry” adds, “They haven’t decided how to lie about the sediment coming down these huge, steep banks into these creeks feeding into the Roanoke Valley and Salem; they haven’t come up with a life for that yet…”

As Tree-Cutting Continues For The Mountain Valley Pipeline, So Do The Protests

Coffey knew, as soon as she read an urgent text from a neighbor and left work in a rush, that it was the day she had been dreading — the day that tree-cutting for the Mountain Valley Pipeline would invade her family farm on Bent Mountain. For three years, Coffey had fought the natural gas pipeline. She spoke against it at a public hearing. She marched against it at a rally on Capitol Square in Richmond. She argued against it when Mountain Valley took her to federal court, where the company obtained an easement through her property by eminent domain. On the day the tree-cutters arrived unannounced, Coffey did the only thing left within her power. She stood as close as she could to the pipeline’s right of way, marked by blue-and-white flagged stakes, and dared the men with chainsaws to keep coming.

Protests Against Pipelines In Canada Hurting Oil & Gas Industry

When the pipeline company Kinder Morgan announced it was suspending work on a major Canadian project that has been delayed by protests and court challenges, it sparked talk of a crisis north of the border and fears that investors may flee the nation's tar sands industry. It was the clearest sign yet of how difficult it's become for energy companies to find new routes to export the country's landlocked oil, among the most expensive and damaging to the climate to produce. Over the past several years, climate activists and indigenous groups—in particular many of Canada's First Nations governments—have built a sustained campaign that has succeeded in delaying, and in some cases canceling, almost every attempt to send more Canadian oil to foreign markets. Canada's tar sands hold one of the world's largest deposits of oil, but as the industry has expanded production over the past decade, it's been unable to complete new pipelines fast enough to ship it out.

Crack FERC Open

BXE is planning a three-day sharing/training, art-build and action from June 23-25, beginning the morning of Saturday, June 23rd. Will you join us? Our communities and our planet are in desperate need of a halt to the permitting and building of all new fossil fuel pipelines and other infrastructure. Communities in the way of proposed new compressor stations, storage and export facilities face toxic industrialization, eminent domain abuse, air, land and water pollution, and threats to health and safety. And our disrupted climate can only heal when jobs-creating renewable energy and energy efficiency have displaced fossil fuels, and people power has displaced corporate power. For decades FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, has supported the oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries.

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