We won.

It took six years, hundreds of rallies, countless hearings, thousands of phone calls, millions of emails (it seems), and dozens of peaceful arrests – but we did it. We just stopped Dominion’s Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) for fracked gas. 

On Sunday, the companies behind the project announced they were flat-out cancelling the controversial ACP. The $8 billion, 600-mile-long pipeline would have shipped fracked gas from West Virginia, through Virginia, and into the Carolinas. Construction of the pipeline would have decapitated whole mountain ridges, destroyed farms, polluted human communities, and contributed mightily to global warming. But not now. It’s dead.

Why is Dominion Energy – Virginia's largest and most notorious utility monopoly – pulling the plug? The company claims a recent court decision in faraway Montana was the final straw. And yes, environmental groups like CCAN, from coast to coast, have been burying companies like Dominion in nonstop legal challenges because what they sell kills people and the planet. But it’s the people who really stopped the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. 

Now we're planning to move on to a full moratorium on all new fossil fuel projects. Support the Chesapeake Climate Action Network with a gift today. We’ll give you the tools to keep fighting for a clean energy future nationwide.

CCAN was relentlessly opposed to the ACP from the day in was announced in September 2014. Then-Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) joined Dominion CEO Tom Farrell at a press conference to ridiculously declare the pipeline a “game-changer” for jobs and the environment. Everything they said about the pipeline was wrong. 

What followed was the largest environmental protest movement in Virginia history. Rural farmers joined urban environmentalists who joined Black-led communities like Union Hill in Buckingham County, an area that would have been all but destroyed by construction. Together we made the case: The pipeline is bad for the environment, leaking methane that destroys the atmosphere on par with coal. The pipeline creates fewer jobs than wind and solar per dollar spent. Its construction poisons water and makes rural communities sicker and poorer. And it makes no sense for Wall Street investors when the tide of history is by now obvious to nearly everyone. 

Support Chesapeake Climate Action Network’s work with a gift today. We still have to fight the Mountain Valley Pipeline and proposed gas-fired power plants in Virginia. We’ll give you the tools to keep fighting for a clean energy future.

Meanwhile, the ACP isn’t the only pipeline defeated in Virginia in recent weeks. CCAN and climate justice advocates around the commonwealth are celebrating a victory on the Header Injustice Project. Major components of that project would have gone through majority-minority communities, many of which have limited internet access, and were therefore unable to participate in virtual hearings about the project. As a result, these communities, with little knowledge or say in the project, would have been the worst impacted by its harms: toxic air pollution, noise, threats of explosion. This is the textbook definition of environmental racism. 

But on June 26, the State Corporation Commission (SCC) issued a preliminary ruling against the project. Although Virginia Natural Gas can reapply for the permit, they will have to comply with certain conditions that could prove extremely difficult to meet. 

Finally, on the other side of the country, the Dakota Access Pipeline was just ordered to shut down construction so it could go through another environmental review. These projects are dangerous, unnecessary, and increasingly unviable. 

Make a donation to CCAN today! Your help allows us to continue our fight against projects like the Header Improvement Project, the Mountain Valley Pipeline, and other projects nationwide.

As for the ACP, here’s the main takeaway for elected leaders everywhere, borrowed from our ongoing civil rights struggle: It’s no longer enough to say you support wind and solar power. You must be AGAINST fossil fuels. The mantra for Democrats and Republicans alike should be this: No new fossil fuel projects of any kind, anywhere. Period. Stop all the proposed pipelines. Keep dirty energy in the ground. And rapidly tear down the existing monuments to that bygone era – the drilling towers, the power plants, the compressor stations.

In the historic aftermath of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline cancellation, our leaders should adopt a statutory moratorium on all new fossil fuel infrastructure. This is the next step for a country where fossil fuels are no longer viable. The tide is turning against fossil fuels. 

We at CCAN want to thank all our partners in this long struggle against the ACP. They include, but are not limited to, Friends of Buckingham, Friends of Nelson, Wild Virginia, Rick Webb, David Sligh, the Allegheny-Blue Ridge Alliance, Lewis Freeman, Bill and Lynn Limpert, Appalachian Voices, Appalachian Mountain Advocates, Southern Environmental Law Center, Pastor Paul Wilson, Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club, Virginia League of Conservation Voters, Virginia Conservation Network, and so many more. Special thanks to current and past CCAN staff and board members who put everything they had – for years! – into stopping this pipeline. 

We never gave up. And we won. 

On we go, 

Mike Tidwell
Executive Director
Chesapeake Climate Action Network

Sources and further reading: 

1) Virginians Cheer Cancellation Of $8 Billion Natural Gas Pipeline

2) Controversial gas pipeline project that would run through Chesapeake delayed