PITTSBORO, N.C. — On stage at the Chatham County Agricultural Conference Center, an 85-year-old widow stood in front of a panel of Enbridge Gas representatives. There was fire in her eyes.
“I’m usually a polite person, but you bring out the worst in me,” she said. “I’m going to fight you to the death.”
In mid-June, she and hundreds of other Chatham County residents attended two community meetings sponsored by Enbridge to voice their opposition to a proposed 48-mile natural gas pipeline that would stretch from Siler City to Moncure in southern Chatham County.
Construction could begin as early as fall 2027, with an opening date in spring 2028.
Enbridge has not announced the final route, but as the company’s surveyors begin surveying private land along the public corridor, residents are analyzing maps that show the pipeline could cut through forests, wetlands, streams, rivers, and historic Black cemeteries, in addition to cutting through and displacing prominent properties.
Company documents say Enbridge has a “proven safety record” and is “committed to being good stewards of natural resources, choosing routes that reduce potential impacts to the environment, and following all permit specifications.” But federal records show Chatham residents’ concerns about Enbridge’s environmental performance are justified. Over the past seven months, Enbridge subsidiaries have accumulated 12 noncompliance events related to the Ridgeline expansion project in Middle Tennessee, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
Enbridge’s East Tennessee Natural Gas is building the 122-mile Ridgeline project to supply natural gas to the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Gas Plant, scheduled to open late next year.
Coal is currently being burned in Kingston, west of Knoxville and 115 miles west of the Tennessee-North Carolina line. It’s the same power plant where a containment wall was breached in 2008, dumping 1 billion gallons of coal ash sludge into the Clinch and Emory rivers.
During pipeline construction, an East Tennessee natural gas contractor caused damage to wetlands and streams after driving heavy equipment across a riverbed and outside of “designated travel lanes,” a FERC investigation found.
They trespassed on private property. According to FERC records, contractors were drilling beneath the channel when they spilled more than 3,000 gallons of drilling mud, known as an “inadvertent return.”
While drilling under the Emory River, pipeline contractors noticed that drilling fluid had spilled 40 feet from the edge of the waterway and was “inadvertently backtracking.” Credit: FERC
Crews will install turbidity curtains to contain drilling fluids that may flow into the Emory River. Credit: FERC
After heavy rains, erosion controls repeatedly failed, sending sediment into wetlands and the Little Emory River. In another instance, contractors forced sediment-laden water past erosion barriers and into a river from a large pool, according to FERC records.
East Tennessee Natural Gas told FERC it corrected the violations and, in some cases, required contractors to undergo additional training, according to federal documents.
On May 13, the Southern Environmental Law Center asked FERC to halt work on the entire project. “The impacts that have already been documented could have long-term negative effects on the local environment,” SELC said.
FERC did not respond to the letter, according to a SELC spokesperson.
But a week after SELC’s letter, East Tennessee Natural Gas suffered its most serious known violation since construction began.
On May 20, federally appointed biologists arrived at the site along the Emory River to survey mussels and relocate endangered species before East Tennessee Natural Gas built a bridge for the facility.
But East Tennessee Natural Gas Contractors was already building the bridge, according to a letter FERC sent to the company. FERC said the contractors jeopardized the habitat of endangered species in that section of the project and violated legal agreements with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service by placing bridge supports over the river.
On May 29, FERC’s compliance monitor issued a stop work order on the project. The commission also required East Tennessee Natural Gas to provide extensive documentation regarding the decision to prematurely construct the bridge.
In a June 18 communication with FERC, the company blamed the violations on “gaps in communication and interpretation of requirements.” Since then, East Tennessee Natural Gas has retrained employees, installed additional signage and fencing, and implemented a communications plan.
Enbridge spokesman Michael Burns said the cease-and-desist order remains in effect, but only in one location as long as Enbridge complies with federal requirements.
The Emory River Incident is the second time East Tennessee Natural Gas has violated federal agreements. The company acknowledged to FERC in June that surveys of other sensitive areas found that “similar conditions occurred at Hurricane Creek” in February.
The letter says East Tennessee Natural Gas is investigating the incident.
For less serious incidents, “East Tennessee Natural Gas is cooperating with applicable state and federal authorities,” Burns wrote in an email to Inside Climate News. “We have taken appropriate steps to avoid further impact. Internally, we are reviewing our processes to strengthen our protocols in these and any sensitive resource areas.”
He added: “We remain committed to protecting both people and the environment during the construction of this important energy project.”
The Chatham County, North Carolina corridor includes the Rocky River watershed and is home to many threatened, endangered, and other species of concern, as well as sensitive habitats along pipeline routes in Tennessee.
“This is considered a globally significant aquatic diversity hotspot,” John Alderman, a former endangered species and conservation biologist, wrote in a letter to Democratic Gov. Josh Stein. According to state wildlife data, the watershed is home to 200 sites where many endangered, endangered, and other species are found.
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The pipeline passage passes through rough terrain, where construction becomes more complex. Many residents at the Agriculture and Conference Center meeting pointed out that Enbridge’s proposed corridor would bypass land owned by Tim Sweeney, the billionaire founder and CEO of Epic Games, the developer of Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular video games.
Sweeney is a land conservationist who has donated tens of thousands of acres of land in North Carolina to nonprofit organizations and the Fish and Wildlife Service to protect endangered habitat.
He owns more than 270 properties in Chatham County that are protected.
When a utility company tried to install high-voltage power lines in the Box Creek Conservation Area in the North Carolina Mountains, Sweeney bought the land for $15 million, won the case in court, and donated a conservation easement to the Fish and Wildlife Service to block the installation of new power lines.
But Sweeney’s lawyers say he’s not trying to circumvent Enbridge’s pipeline.
He and his attorneys have argued for a route that would minimize new disruption by following existing utility easements to the extent possible.
“I am pleased to offer an easement through my (Chatham County) land along a large-scale power transmission corridor that runs through several miles of my conservation land,” Sweeney told Inside Climate News in an email. “This seems like an ideal route for many reasons.”
Enbridge spokeswoman Percida Montanez told Inside Climate News that the company is considering running new pipelines along existing right-of-ways when practical to minimize environmental impact.
But that’s not possible for the Chatham County project, Montanez wrote in an email.
First, Enbridge does not have its own existing site in the area that could be used for the project, she said.
And second, “continuing with existing transmission easements would impact more landowners and further disrupt environmentally sensitive areas that are currently unaffected,” Montanez wrote in an email.
The councilman, who has mapped out properties that could be affected, including his own, said some landowners with existing transmission easements could lose up to 40 percent of their land if Enbridge builds along those rights-of-way.
“For people who only own a few acres, power line easements are a real burden,” Alderman said.
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thank you,
Lisa Sorg
north carolina reporter
Lisa Sorg is a North Carolina reporter for Inside Climate News. A journalist for 30 years, Sorg covers energy, climate and agriculture, as well as the social justice impacts of pollution and corporate misconduct.
She has received numerous awards for news, public service, and investigative reporting. In 2022, she won the Stokes Award from the National Press Foundation for a two-part story about the environmental damage caused by a former missile factory in a black and Latino neighborhood in Burlington. Mr. Sorg previously served as an environmental investigative reporter at NC Newsline, a Raleigh-based nonprofit media outlet. She has also worked for alternative weeklies, dailies, and magazines. Originally from rural Indiana, I now live in Durham, North Carolina.
