Gaslighting: This is the first in a series published in partnership with The Assembly about opposition to new natural gas pipelines, power plants, and storage facilities in North Carolina.
Listen to an audio version of this story below.
ROUGEMONT, NC—Andrea Childers walked down a moss-covered path with Hubert, the family Corgi, leading the way. She veered onto an old logging road and arrived at the creek, which lies a mile downstream of the Moriah Energy Center site in southeastern Person County.
This creek was a major reason the Childers family bought the property more than 30 years ago. It’s where their daughters, now 29 and 26, played and caught crayfish. It’s where Andrea found solace after a miscarriage. She showed photos taken last January of a clear stream, now turned brown.
In mid-August, Childers, her husband Paul, and Samantha Krop, the Neuse Riverkeeper, led three state Division of Water Resources inspectors on a creek tour. Krop found turbidity levels in the creeks leaving the Moriah Energy Center at 20 times the state standards.
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“After much back and forth, the state acknowledged that the sediment was coming from Dominion’s site,” Krop said, referring to the energy center’s owner. “But they said their hands are tied. We go around in circles here.”
“There is no arguing that this is Dominion’s pollution,” Childers said. “This is another lesson in futility.”
Half a mile away, Dominion Energy is toppling trees and blasting bedrock to build the $400 million Moriah Energy Center, where it will store liquified natural gas (LNG) on 485 acres of forestland.
When finished, the MEC will hold 50 million gallons of LNG in two pressurized tanks at temperatures of -260 degrees Fahrenheit. Each tank will be 160 feet tall and 600 feet around, roughly the circumference of a Ferris wheel.
A few days later, Krop sat as a passenger in a Cessna flown by a SouthWings volunteer pilot over southern Person County.
It’s peak summer, and lush forests cover the landscape. Helena Moriah Road, sinuous and narrow, hems in the fields of ripening rows of corn.
Suddenly, there it is: the future factory for freezing and liquefying natural gas, now a brown scour of rubble and dirt.
At 5,000 feet, the rest of the fossil fuel industry’s expansive buildout comes into view: Hyco Lake in northern Person County, where Duke Energy plans to build two new natural gas-fired power plants to replace existing coal plants. Dominion’s proposed natural gas pipeline, called the T15 Reliability Project, will run 45 miles west to Eden, in Rockingham County. Near Eden, more natural gas will flow through the Southgate portion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline. The Transco pipeline expansion will cross 28 miles between Rockingham, Guilford, Forsyth, and Davidson counties.
Add Duke’s proposed natural gas plants in Catawba County and four compressor stations, and the result would be hundreds of thousands of tons of new greenhouse gases entering North Carolina’s atmosphere each year.
The natural gas that flows into North Carolina originates from fracking operations in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. At every stop of gas production, methane gas, 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the atmosphere, escapes into the air.
As the planet warms and America transitions to renewable energy, the fossil fuel build-out in North Carolina mirrors industry endeavors nationwide. North Carolina ranks fourth in planned natural gas plants over the next 11 years, according to a Sierra Club analysis of federal and state data. Big build-outs are also occurring in Texas and Indiana.
“I hear about climate change over and over again. God forbid we say why it’s occurring.”
Concerned residents, environmental groups, and clean energy advocates want to stop all these projects. They are worried about local impacts on water, air, and habitats, as well as greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.
“I hear about climate change over and over again,” Childers said. “God forbid we say why it’s occurring.”
Childers’ short blonde hair frames her large brown eyes, which can quickly turn from kind to furious, especially when addressing county officials who voted to rezone the property for the Moriah Energy Center.
“My name is Andrea Childers and I’ve lived in Person County for 31 years,” she introduces herself each time. She wants the commissioners to remember her voice: “It’s the only tool I have.”
‘This Is Where It All Began’
Just over a mile from the Moriah Energy Center site lies Elderberry, a cohousing community. The bungalows form a semi-circle along a sandy path and face a central meeting place, the Hive. Residents take yoga classes, host Bastille Day celebrations, and attend seminars on living sustainably. A small array of solar panels reclines in a field, near a charging station for electric cars.
In August heat, cherry tomatoes dangle from vines, figs ripen, and crape myrtle trees greet visitors. Residents, all aged 55 or older, cross the courtyard carrying potluck dishes and compost canisters.
“People think Elderberry is a weird hippie commune,” Ahrens said. “But it’s just 18 houses and 22 old people who want to live peacefully and in harmony.”
Ahrens and her husband, Don, have known each other since they were 14 in Toledo, Ohio. Their friends, Elissa and Chuck Huffstetler, live four doors down. “We’re like sisters,” Ahrens said, “and our husbands are like brothers. We’re with people we love.”
The Ahrens visited Elderberry a decade ago, thinking they might live there someday. Back in Massachusetts, Theresa was a hospice volunteer coordinator and Don was a physical therapist’s assistant. Then the Covid pandemic hit, and nearly a third of the nursing home patients died.
Elderberry seemed like a place of peace.
The Huffstetlers have long felt connected with nature. They met on the inaugural Earth Day in April 1970. They joined the Back to the Land movement, valuing sustainability. They moved to the North Carolina mountains, lived off the grid, built their home from salvaged materials, and grew their food. Elissa gave birth to their son and daughter at home.
They later moved to Charlotte but volunteered to build houses in Guatemala each summer. Elissa co-founded a nonprofit to provide student scholarships.
When they left Charlotte, they sought a sense of community and settled in Elderberry.
One recent morning, Ahrens and Huffstetler had finished emptying the dishwasher after a community hot dog party. They reflected on their long fight against the Moriah Energy Center.
“This is where it all began,” Ahrens said, tapping the dining room table. “I thought it would be three or four months. We didn’t know what we had stepped in.”
In September 2023, Dominion sent a notice to Elderberry about the plant—just one letter for 18 households. It was thrown in the trash at the Hive, but Ahrens retrieved it, thinking it was a bill.
The Moriah Energy Center was coming. Dominion needed the Person County Commissioners to rezone the property from rural conservation to general industrial.
Ahrens and Huffstetler thought it impossible. The county’s zoning ordinance banned hazardous material storage. And if not hazardous, what is 50 million gallons of potentially combustible LNG?
Huffstetler sent letters and emails to county commissioners, state regulators, and environmental groups. They invited people to a community meeting with 1,300 postcards. Huffstetler wondered what they had done.
On a warm evening last October, 70 residents gathered. Ahrens began, “We’re here to listen.”
Over two hours, residents compiled a list of 250 questions about noise, air quality, explosion risks, truck traffic, and the impact on farms and water wells.
They wanted details about Dominion’s pending sale to the Canadian company Enbridge, North America’s largest crude oil and natural gas transmitter with an uneven safety record.
Most residents opposed the project. Many believed the company and county would understand if they listened to their concerns.
In hindsight, Ahrens and Huffstetler were naive. “I thought, ‘Of course we can stop this,’” Ahrens said. “It’s a democracy.”
But emails obtained under state records law show that Dominion was ready to announce the project in July 2023 with local officials, including County Commission Chairman Gordon Powell and Phillip Allen, head of the Economic Development Commission.
“We appreciate your endorsement,” wrote Rosemary Wyche, a public affairs consultant for Dominion.
“This is wonderful news for Person County!!” Allen replied. “We welcome this project!!”
Wyche responded, “We look forward to building a strong corporate presence.”
LNG Regulation: Rife With Loopholes
Last December, more than 350 people crammed into the Person County auditorium to oppose the Moriah Energy Center. The commissioners took just 20 seconds to unanimously vote to rezone the property.
Andrea Childers began chanting, “Shame, shame, shame!”
Powell turned to a sheriff’s deputy: “Get them out of here.”
Since then, Dominion has clear-cut 74 acres for the plant. The remaining land serves as an “exclusion zone,” a forested safety buffer in case of a major gas leak or fire.
The company doesn’t have to file a risk management plan because LNG plants like the Moriah Energy Center are considered stationary sources, regulated by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), a division of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Katie Moore, an independent air quality researcher, said the lack of a risk management plan is concerning. Moore, who has worked with communities affected by fossil fuel companies, lives in Roxboro, near the Moriah Energy Center.
Dominion spokesperson Persida Montanez said the “emergency reporting” required is comparable to the EPA’s risk management program.
According to the EPA, a risk management program includes a hazard assessment, prevention, emergency response, and management.
While the county has a temporary emergency communications plan, it lacks a specific emergency response plan for the Moriah Energy Center, said Commissioner Powell.
Montanez highlighted Dominion’s safety record at its LNG plants in Cary and Magna, Utah. Yet, since 2011, 22 incidents have been reported to PHMSA.
In North Carolina, an LNG plant in Huntersville contaminated several drinking water wells with benzene and trichloroethylene in 2008. State regulators required Piedmont Natural Gas to excavate contaminated soil, but groundwater remains tainted.
“It’s concerning,” Moore said. “And if you’re in a community that doesn’t want a facility like this, there’s not a lot of options for you.”
No Impacts to Wetlands or Streams?
In mid-April, the Roxboro Area Chamber of Commerce hosted a meeting about the Moriah Energy Center at the Golden Corral. Dominion spokesperson Julia Wright claimed, “There will be minimal or no impacts to wetlands or streams.”
The crowd laughed. For months, local residents and Krop had documented sludge entering creeks from the site.
The meeting ended without addressing all concerns.
Krop continued to document waterway damage downstream. She found
Original Story at insideclimatenews.org