The lone yellow pine that helped stop a giant

 

We will be blogging individual articles from The League Line, our quarterly newsletter

Summer 2020 Issue: http://bredl.org/theleagueline/Summer2020.pdf

Index to this and other issues: http://bredl.org/theleagueline/index.htm

Painting of the pine on the Winstead farm by Nathalie Worthington

By Catherine Cralle Jones, July 12, 2020

The Law Office of F. Bryan Brice, Jr.

On July 9, 2020, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) dropped its two and a half year legal conquest to condemn land and cut down miles of trees in Halifax, Nash and Wilson Counties, North Carolina, including a lone pine on the Winstead Farm in Nash County. The dismissal of the five lawsuits by ACP comes in the wake of the announcement on July 5th that ACP’s partners, Dominion Energy and Duke Energy were pulling the plug on the project to build a 600-mile pipeline to transport natural gas from fracked shale fields in Pennsylvania, through West Virginia, Virginia, and across North Carolina from Northampton County to Robeson County. In its own way, that lone pine in Nash County helped to stop the project that seemed inevitable, especially after the US Supreme Court ruling on June 15th allowed the pipeline to cross the Appalachian Trail.

The lone yellow pine stands watch over the Winstead Farm in Nash County. Protected by Marvin Winstead’s mother decades before, the tree in 2018 became the bull’s eye target for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline as it sought to cut a more than 130-foot-wide path diagonally across planted fields and forest of the farm, taking 12 of the 70 acres that had been farmed by the Winstead family for almost 100 years and three generations.

Other landowners refused to bow to the threats. They could not offer their sacred lands for a project that would destroy miles of trees and wetlands and would support the buildout of an infrastructure dedicated to fossil fuel extraction and further speeding climate change.

After receiving authorization from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to move forward with construction, in January of 2018, ACP filed 29 federal condemnation lawsuits against North Carolina landowners seeking to take the easements they wanted and requesting to begin cutting down trees. One of those lawsuits took dead aim at the Winstead tree.

The tree did not stand alone to face the giant. Other landowners, environmental advocates, and community groups across West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina also worked to stop the ACP. Communities organized, spoke out, and formed teams to monitor and help one another understand on-going and potential construction impacts. The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, The Allegheny Blue-Ridge Alliance, the Sierra Club, Appalachian Voice, Clean Water for N.C., and other groups helped to educate and empower landowners and residents. The Southern Environmental Law Center and other attorneys on behalf of landowners, river keepers and environmental groups, filed legal challenges to the FERC permit itself, and against the weak permits that ACP was able to obtain from federal agencies under the Trump administration. These legal efforts led to permits being vacated, an eventual stop work order from FERC, and a voluntary cessation of construction since December of 2018. Nevertheless, ACP continued to push forward to compel landowners to give up their land rights by force of law.

In March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic spread, ACP continued to press landowners into mediation and pressed them to allow an out-of-state appraiser to come onto their property and into their homes to prepare its expert reports on the value of their land. When stay-at-home orders were issued in North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland (where the appraiser was from), landowners stood firm and denied ACP their request to access their land.

In mid-April, a federal judge in Montana reviewing the Keystone XL Pipeline struck down the Nationwide 12 Permit issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and relied on by Keystone to cross wetlands and streams from Canada to Texas. The order covered not only the Keystone Pipeline but all pipeline construction that relied on a Nationwide 12 Permit, including the ACP.

At 3 pm on Sunday, July 5, 2020, Dominion Energy and Duke Energy suddenly announced to the world, including its condemnation attorneys, that it was canceling the ACP. The companies noted that the estimated project costs, $4.5 billion at permitting, had grown to $8 billion, with a three-and-a-half-year delay and uncertainty remaining. Landowners, communities, and environmental groups began celebrating the unprecedented victory after a long six-year battle.

As a result of their resistance and the abandonment of the ACP, Celena and Robert Bissette will continue to enjoy the wetlands and woodlands on the edge of their Wilson County farm that would have been destroyed under the Nationwide 12 Permit, now under national challenge.

By raising their voices in opposition and refusing to negotiate, Valerie Williams and son, Travis Privott, can enjoy and continue to develop the spiritual sanctuary and retreat, farming operation, and eco-tourism opportunities on the Otto Williams Farm, with their family’s Halifax County legacy still intact.

By refusing to back down, Mrs. Normandy Blackman, on behalf of the Solomon Heirs, secured their legacy in the fields and woodlands of the Solomon Farm in Halifax County so that the descendants of freed slave, Artelia Scott Solomon, can now build homes and raise proud Americans.

Because of Marvin Winstead’s refusal to sell out his farm in exchange for dirty energy, the lone pine continues to stand watch over the Nash County Winstead farm.