Yogaville, P.E. Residents Speak Out Against Pipeline

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission held a meeting in the Prince Edward County High School Auditorium on Tuesday night to allow local residents to weigh in on the construction and routing of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. The pipeline is going to be used to move an estimated 1.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas daily from the gas fields in the Marcellus Shale deposit south into the Carolinas, with a branch that will carry natural gas into the Norfolk, Virginia area. An unusually large number of law enforcement officers were assigned to the meeting. They were stationed outside in the parking area and at the front doors to the auditorium as well as inside the meeting hall.

The proposed route of the pipeline has been a point of contention since it was first announced. Last night, residents of Yogaville, an ashram in Buckingham County, turned out in numbers that could only be interpreted as a show of solidarity. They do not want anything to do with the pipeline at all. Actually, that was a sentiment that was held by the vast majority of residents in attendance. There were approximately 200 residents in attendance. There were only three or four that spoke in favor of the pipeline. Those that spoke against it used such reasoning as the pipeline becoming a target for possible terrorist attack. This line of reasoning was used by more than one speaker at the meeting, regardless of the fact that the state of Virginia, albeit the entire United States are crisscrossed with natural gas pipelines and the specific routes of these pipelines can be found with a few clicks of a mouse at just about any computer with access to the internet.

It is true that the method that is being used to unlock the vast stores of natural gas, hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” as it is now more commonly known, carries with it a high degree of controversy as to how it will affect the environment, particularly our fresh water resources due to contamination of stores by frackwater runoff. It is also a strain just by the sheer quantity of fresh water it uses to complete the fracking process. All of the risks have been deemed worth taking by our government, a decision made apparent by the natural gas exploration initiative that was released by the Whitehouse in 2012.

The Atlantic Coast Pipeline stands to bring vast opportunities to our economy, and the economies of the areas along the pipeline route corridor. Natural gas is cleaner to use and immeasurably cheaper right now and in the foreseeable future. According to some sources, natural gas is the fuel of the future, easing the pressure on the use of other fossil fuels while research continues to perfect true alternative energy sources. This was a point that Prince Edward County Supervisor Bob Timmons, one of the only three or four proponents of the pipeline, stressed when he spoke last night.