Outdoor Chapel in Lancaster County, PA
From an Article by Amanda Watts and Paige Levin, CNN, July 8, 2017
An open-air chapel set up by Catholic nuns to block construction of a natural gas pipeline in Pennsylvania will be dedicated Sunday on a spot directly in the pipeline’s proposed path.
The ceremony, hosted by grass-roots opposition group Lancaster Against Pipelines, is called “Stand With the Sisters” and is in support of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, a Catholic order of women in opposition to the pipeline. The Adorers own the land that the Atlantic Sunrise pipeline would cross.
“It’s not about money, it’s about principle. And the nuns have a land ethic that says this Earth is a sanctuary and we regard it as sacred, and we’re going to work to protect it,” Mark Clatterbuck of the Lancaster Against Pipelines group told CNN affiliate WGAL-TV.
Though the Adorers have resisted the pipeline project, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has ruled that Williams Partners, the Oklahoma-based company planning to build the pipeline, has the right to construct, maintain and operate it on the private land via eminent domain.
Eminent domain has not yet gone into effect, so the nuns, backed by Lancaster Against Pipelines, are taking action to stall construction.
Proponents of the pipeline filed an emergency order Thursday to expedite seizure of the Adorers’ land, WGAL reported. Protester Ann Neumann said 20 members of the Adorers’ order live on the proposed pipeline site.
A judge scheduled a court hearing for July 17th, according to court papers.
In a statement, Williams said the company respects the right to protest peacefully. “With the exception of the width of the construction right-of-way, this structure (the open-air chapel) can be placed anywhere else on the property without issue,” the company wrote.
Neumann said hundreds of people have voiced support for the sisters. “We’re expecting a large crowd,” she said of Sunday’s ceremony in Columbia, Pennsylvania. “What we’re hoping to get is a community joining together to voice opposition to this project that is incredibly difficult to stop.”
Pipeline is ‘A violation of their faith’
The pipeline would bisect the Adorers’ property, but more importantly, supporters say, it defies their land ethic. “They see the pipeline as a violation of their faith,” Neumann said.
The nuns spent the past week putting together the “bare-bones” outdoor structure, with benches in front of a makeshift altar. It is open to the public and welcomes members of all faiths, Neumann said.
The ceremony will include presentations by several Adorers and singing by members of another religious order from Kentucky.
It will culminate in a reading of the Adorers’ land ethic, which guides the sisters to “revere Earth as a sanctuary where all life is protected.”
Williams Pipeline plans
According to the application filed by Williams, it wants to lay 183 miles of pipeline across Pennsylvania, which would extend the Transco pipeline system currently running 10,200 miles from Texas to New York. Bordering states are also part of the $3 billion expansion of the existing Transco natural gas pipeline.
Neumann told CNN that residents have known about the proposed pipeline for about three years but feel they have been kept in the dark. That’s why the project’s opponents created Lancaster Against Pipelines, she said.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the pipeline earlier this year, according to a statement from Williams.
“Once complete, it will create a crucial connection between Pennsylvania and consuming markets all along the East Coast, delivering enough natural gas to fuel more than 7 million homes,” the company said in a statement. “In the process, it will deliver economic growth, jobs and increased access to affordable, clean-burning energy.”
See also: “Natural Gas Building Boom Fuels Climate Worries, Enrages Landowners”
(From Kristen Lombardi & Jamie Smith Hopkins, NPR, July 17, 2017)
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Atlantic Coast pipeline to forge ahead with surveys after Va. high court rulings
By Ximena Mosqueda-Fernandez, July 14, 2017
The Atlantic Coast gas pipeline project’s developers promised to move forward in cooperation with landowners after a pair of Virginia Supreme Court rulings on cases dealing with the project’s surveying authority.
The state high court issued the rulings July 13 in cases that examined different aspects of the legality of Atlantic Coast teams entering private properties to survey the pipeline route. After landowners denied or withheld permission to survey, Atlantic Coast sponsors, led by Dominion Energy Inc., petitioned for declaratory judgments in separate Virginia county circuit courts, both of which ruled in favor of the project’s right to enter properties. The Virginia high court agreed with the lower court in one case but not the other.
The Supreme Court remanded Chaffins v. Atlantic Coast Pipeline LLC for further proceedings. The ruling overturned the circuit court’s finding that Atlantic Coast could enter landowners’ properties based on notices of intent to enter that did not specify a single date when project surveyors would enter the properties.
Although Atlantic Coast later revised the notices to include dates of entry before conducting surveys, Justice William Mims said the original notices presented “an issue of statutory interpretation” that the Supreme Court intends to review anew. “There is an actual, ongoing controversy regarding [Atlantic Coast]‘s right under the original notices to enter landowners’ properties,” Mims wrote.
In Palmer v. Atlantic Coast Pipeline LLC, the Supreme Court determined that the project sponsors have the privilege to enter private land in order to survey, supporting the ruling of the circuit court. The ruling added that a landowner’s fundamental property rights cannot be used to exclude the project sponsors from surveying the area.
In a July 13 press release, Dominion Energy spokesman Aaron Ruby said the company was pleased with the decisions from the court. “We’re hopeful today’s ruling will settle this issue and allow is to continue working cooperatively with landowners to develop infrastructure in a way that minimizes impacts to the environment and their properties,” Ruby said.
On Chaffins, Ruby said the high court’s findings on the issue were consistent with those of other state and federal courts. “We respect the court’s ruling regarding landowner notifications,” Ruby said. “Going forward, we’ll continue our company’s policy of providing landowners with specific dates of entry prior to surveying.”
The transmission line would run for 600 miles from West Virginia, through Virginia and into North Carolina, carrying approximately 1.5-MMDth/d. The project is sponsored by Dominion, Southern Co. Gas, Duke Energy Corp. and Duke Piedmont Natural Gas Co. Inc.
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission staff is expected to issue an environmental impact statement for the project July 21. The project received a positive draft environmental review in December 2016. (FERC docket CP15-554)