Perched on platform high in a tree, woman fights a gas pipeline
As the stalemate drags on, “I stand with Red” has become a rallying cry for opponents of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 300-mile, US$3.5 billion (RM13 billion) project being built by a coalition of companies led by EQT Midstream Partners.
ROANOKE COUNTY, Virginia: When the trees started coming down, Theresa “Red” Terry went up.
Now, the 61-year- old mother of three is perched on a platform 32 feet in the air between two oak trees, trying to stop a natural gas pipeline from coming through land granted to her husband’s family by the king of England in colonial times.
For three weeks, she has endured rain, snow, hail, nighttime temperatures in the 20s and high winds. Her body is stiff and sore. When she huddles under a tarp to stay warm, it’s usually too dark to read. She’s bored.
Ten days ago, police said family and friends could no longer bring her food and water.
Officers are waiting at the base of the trees, around the clock, to arrest her when she finally comes down. Her 30-year- old daughter is in another tree, too far through the family’s woods to see, also defying police.
They’re trespassing on their own property.
As the stalemate drags on, “I stand with Red” has become a rallying cry for opponents of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 300-mile, US$ 3.5 billion ( RM13 billion) project being built by a coalition of companies led by EQT Midstream Partners.
It’s the farther along of two gas pipelines planned in Virginia. An even bigger project, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, is being built through the central part of the state by a coalition led by Dominion Energy, the state’s largest utility. The two pipelines have thrown together environmentalists; although property rights advocates have tried to block them, the projects have won political and regulatory support at every turn.
With tree- clearing finally underway, an air of desperation is gripping opponents. A handful of other tree-sitters have blocked part of the Mountain Valley Pipeline’s route in the Jefferson National Forest in West Virginia since February. A few more sitters went up trees in Virginia’s Franklin County last week.
Last Wednesday, a group of Democratic state law makers from northern Virginia and Richmond joined with others from the south-western part of the state to call on Governor Ralph Northam, to slow both projects, a sign that the issue is expanding beyond a regional concern.
Though Northam’s office said there is nothing the governor can do, because the project has won federal approval, the State Water Control Board has approved a new 30- day comment period for the public to weigh in on whether waterway protections are adequate.
That has given Terry and her army of supporters some hope.
Sticking her head out from a plastic tarp one frigid morning last week, she vowed to carry on for “as long as I can.” Down below, several uniformed Roanoke County police officers, two state troopers in full camouflage gear and a pipeline security official listened from a blue tent.
Last Friday, pressure on her family grew. The pipeline company asked a federal judge to declare the Terrys in civil contempt, fine them for every day of violation, direct US marshals to remove the tree- sitters and charge them for damages from the delay.
Coles Terry III - husband of one tree- sitter, father of the other - said he knew it would eventually come to that. “I’m here to support my wife and daughter in the trees, and that means doing anything I can,” he said. “If that means sending me to jail, then OK.”
The Terrys first heard of e Mountain Valley Pipeline when they got a notice in the mail a little less than four years ago.
It seemed hard to imagine that something would intrude on their wooded enclave on Bent Mountain, south-west of Roanoke.
Coles Terry III, his brother, a sister and other family members own about 1,500 acres near the Blue Ridge Parkway - crisscrossed with streams, full of old hay fields surrounded by deep woods and narrow dirt lanes winding up rocky slopes.
As the pipeline project simmered along, the Terrys and their neighbours spent increasing amounts of time and resources fighting it. They attended public hearings, peppered the landscape with hand-painted anti-pipeline signs, attended rallies and supported anti-pipeline officials running for elections.
To them, the pipeline seems like a violation because it doesn’t appear to yield local benefits. When the county first brought in electricity, Coles Terry III said, the family was happy to give up land for power lines to help their whole community.
The gas that will flow under their property originates in West Virginia and will pass almost to the North Carolina line.
Invoking eminent domain, the pipeline builders offered to compensate the Terrys for using a stretch of their land. The family rejected the money and instead filed suit to stop the project. A federal judge ruled against them early last month.
That’s when Red, as everyone knows her, took note of the treesitters blocking the pipeline route in West Virginia and decided she would do the same.
Her 61-year- old husband, a construction superintendent, worked with his son and other activists to build the stands and get them up into trees smack in the middle of the staked- off pipeline right of way.
After Red and Theresa Minor Terry took their positions, they were spotted by workers who came to clear trees.
Day after day, the women could hear the chain saws getting closer. Red’s daughter, who goes by Minor, has lived on the mountain almost all her life, except during college. She keeps the books for a real estate company, which has given her time off in support of the protest.
The week before last, the treeclearing got within sight of her perch. “She was torn up. And I was sitting over here and every time one of these (trees) hit the ground it was like driving a nail in my head,” her father said. That same day, police came to read her an official notice to get out of the tree.
“I was so proud of her,” he said. “When they read the notice the second time and they asked her, ‘Do you need help getting down?’ She threw that tarp back and it’s like, ‘ I don’t need help getting down cuz I don’t intend to come down.’ And flipped the tarp back over top of her.”
It wasn’t until Thursday that police filed formal charges: trespassing, obstruction of justice and interfering with property rights.
With community sympathy running high for the Terrys - neighbours help sit watch all day and night; local restaurants supply food and host fundraisers - Roanoke County police say they’re handling the matter as carefully as they can.
“We acknowledge that this is a very difficult situation for everyone involved,” public information officer Amy Whittaker said via email. “But the fact remains that this has played out in the court systems and consistently rulings have been in favor of MVP. It is not the job of the Police Department to contest decisions made at the state and federal levels.” Emergency medical technicians stop by every afternoon to check on the women, who joke and chat with them and with the police. They haven’t denied the women food and water, Whittaker said; it’s available at the base of the trees if they want to come down and get it.
If they come down, though, they’ll be arrested.
Pipeline officials are frustrated by the stalemate. They say that 86 per cent of land owners in the route of the pipeline have accepted settlements to permit construction. The pipelines won erosion and sediment permits from the state in December, clearing the way for construction to begin.
The project has gone through extra- ordinary review. State officials agree that both gas pipelines have been subjected to the most detailed study they’ve ever seen.
But opponents are outraged that detailed review of stream-by-stream crossings was left to federal officials, despite a promise last year from Northam - when he was running for office - that the state would conduct its own review.
Last Wednesday, more than a dozen Democratic law makers held a news conference highlighting Red Terry’s protest and calling on the governor to do more. “We’re asking - urging - demanding that our good friend Ralph Northam . . . work with us to find common ground,” said Mark Keam, Fairfax, who was joined by other delegates from Prince William, Fairfax, Alexandria and Richmond to show solidarity with south-west colleagues.
“We stand together, and we stand with Red,” said Danica Roem, Prince William.