On a November afternoon in 2022, a 57-year-old well tapped into an underground natural gas storage reservoir in western Pennsylvania started leaking, fast enough that people a few miles away heard a loud, jet engine-like noise. 

By the time the leak was stopped nearly two weeks later, roughly 16,000 metric tons of methane had escaped into the atmosphere, the equivalent of more than the annual greenhouse gas emissions from 300,000 gas-powered cars.

The blowout of a well at the Rager Mountain gas storage field was the worst methane leak from underground storage since Aliso Canyon in California in 2015. That incident forced thousands of people from their homes and sickened many of them, taking four months to contain. In 2021, 35,000 plaintiffs in one class-action lawsuit were awarded up to $1.5 billion in damages. 

While not as large or imminently dangerous to residents, the Rager Mountain leak was a “disaster,” according to one Pennsylvania regulator. Bloomberg labeled it the United States’ worst climate disaster that year. 

The natural gas that leaked methane in Pennsylvania and California is not stored in tanks but in giant underground geological formations accessed by multiple wells. There are about 400 such storage fields across 32 states.

According to a new report, there are thousands more potential opportunities for a similar situation across the country. The new analysis of data collected by federal regulators suggests there are as many as 11,446 storage wells in the country with the same key risk as the wells that failed at Rager Mountain and Aliso Canyon: They have only a single barrier to failure.

“That population is a lot larger than we had estimated, or other researchers had estimated with state [data],” says Greg Lackey, an author on the study and researcher at the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. 

All but one of Pennsylvania’s 49 gas storage fields has at least one potential single point of failure well, researchers found.

Natural gas is primarily made up of methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in the short-term. Methane leaks from oil and gas infrastructure are under increasing scrutiny in the United States and worldwide, as stopping them represents a relatively cheap and effective way to prevent greenhouse gas emissions, the primary cause of global warming.

Leaks from gas storage are only one part of the industry’s methane problem. Such facilities also are at risk of dramatic blowouts that are hard to control because they are connected to large, pressurized reservoirs of gas. 

New rules, fees aim to cut methane leaks

Regulations put in place on gas storage post-Aliso Canyon are still rolling out, including a requirement for baseline risk assessments on all wells by 2027. New EPA rules on methane leaks and repair and a planned federal fee on “waste” methane would impact gas storage as well. 

The fee, which is still being finalized, would force companies to eventually pay up to $1,500 per metric ton of methane in excess of the equivalent of 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, a threshold the Rager Mountain leak meets almost 20 times over. Industry groups have pushed back against the fee, arguing it would harm smaller oil and gas companies and discourage oil and gas production overall.

Many of these wells are decades-old and not originally designed for storage. They have gone through the stresses of repeated cycles of injecting and withdrawing gas. Some, like Rager Mountain, are in relatively rural, sparsely-populated areas, but others are close to neighborhoods in Pennsylvania, Ohio and California. 

The Rager Mountain leak was caused by a break below ground in one well’s casing — the barrier between where pressurized gas flows and the geology around it. The well had become heavily corroded from exposure to water, air and organic matter through an open valve, according to an third-party analysis submitted to regulators and obtained through a public records request.  

“They probably didn’t realize it, but they were creating an optimum case for corrosion,” says Dan Arthur, president of the engineering and technical services firm ALL Consulting, who reviewed the analysis. 

Arthur says older wells in storage fields haven’t been given “as much significance” as they should be, and operators need to make sure they’re fully addressing well integrity.

“Age is a risk factor that you have to consider, but it also depends on how you are caring for the well,” he says. Redundant barriers reduce the risk of methane escaping if the well casing fails, Arthur and Lackey say.

Minimum federal safety standards on underground storage fields were set less than a decade ago in the aftermath of the Aliso Canyon leak. One of the federal agencies in charge of regulating gas storage sites, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, only began collecting regular data on underground storage fields in 2017.

More data needed to identify riskiest wells

The number of wells with potentially only one barrier was three times larger than previously estimated before the PHMSA data became available, Lackey says. This “single point of failure” design featured in both Rager Mountain and Aliso Canyon blowouts is present in as many as 64% of all gas storage wells in the United States, his research found.

But the data reported to PHMSA is not enough to confirm how many of these wells actually have a single point of failure that would flag wells at the highest risk of another blowout, Lackey says. Researchers would need more information about each well’s design and construction, he says.

“What you don’t get insight into is how many other casings there are, or where the locations of cement are,” Lackey says, describing additional barriers that would lower the risk.

Rager Mountain’s owner and operator, Equitrans, had its own risk ranking of storage wells, according to the third-party analysis. While Rager is the company’s largest field in Pennsylvania, its wells were not the highest ranked in the company’s own risk management plan; Others were higher up the list because of their proximity to residential areas.

Both Peoples Natural Gas, the previous owner of the field, and Equitrans “recognized that corrosion was an issue,” so the companies used probes, known as “logs,” to examine the integrity of the well casings. But, the analysis noted, “Such a strategy is dependent on the logging being reasonably accurate.”

A 2016 test of the casing wall of the well that eventually failed underestimated its corrosion, the report says. When Equitrans reran the test after the blowout using an updated algorithm, it showed far more corrosion.


In the wake of the Rager Mountain blowout, Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection, said it was considering a  “top to bottom review” of the state’s gas storage industry. Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states that have their own regulations covering gas storage. 

“Everything is on the table for consideration in terms of making sure this industry is regulated appropriately and the public is protected and the environment is protected from potential incidents like this happening again,” said Kurt Klapkowski, acting deputy secretary for DEP’s Oil and Gas Management office, a month after the incident.

‘A huge battery system’

But after a successful effort by Equitrans to move the bulk of the incident investigation to federal regulators, DEP appears uncertain or unable to move forward with such a review. Klapkowski told the agency’s Oil and Gas board in September that regulators were “trying to figure out where our jurisdiction ends or might be preempted by the federal government.”  

Pennsylvania DEP’s investigation into surface and groundwater contamination at Rager Mountain is ongoing, the agency said in an emailed statement, and it “remains committed to its goal of inspecting storage field wells on an annual basis regardless of risk.” 

Wells are assessed through surface inspections and information reported by operators, DEP added, using multiple factors to prioritize wells for inspection, including the potential environmental impact and likelihood of failure, as well as proximity to population.

Equitrans has taken several steps to reduce risk in its storage fields, spokesperson Natalie Cox said in an emailed statement. They include reprocessing older well tests, running additional tests on another 100 wells in 2023, and changing its requirements for when to add protective gel to reduce corrosion. The company did not answer questions about whether these tests led to any well replacements. 

Lackey’s study also found that nationally, while most leaks from gas storage were connected with accidents or well improvement projects known as workovers, leaks from corrosion released a much larger volume of methane.

“If it’s a valve or something that’s broken off on the wellhead, that might be easier to contain, rather than something downhole that would be exposed to higher pressures within the well,” he says. “During workovers you have systems in place to contain the well … whereas with corrosion, that’s something going on silently in the background.”

While a 2016 government task force recommended phasing out single point of failure of wells, ultimately the federal minimum standards only required operators to address them through submitting risk-management plans to federal regulators — plans that are not public. 

The release of gas from Rager Mountain in November 2022 represented about 15% of the field’s working storage volume. Underground storage fields act as “a huge battery system,” says Drew Michanowicz, a researcher who has studied their proximity to residential areas. 

Major leaks from storage not only release huge volumes of greenhouse gases but also reduce reliability in areas where natural gas dominates home heating and electricity production, Michanowicz says.

The federal leak investigation at Rager Mountain remains open at least until regulators review work on fixing three temporarily plugged wells in the field, likely in the spring. But Rager Mountain is otherwise operating. In October, with PHMSA’s approval, Equitrans began injecting gas into the field for the winter. 

Floodlight is a non-profit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action. This story was produced with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Why a natural gas storage climate ‘disaster’ could happen again is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

As federal incentives spur a wave of new domestic clean energy manufacturing, economic boosters in Ohio and neighboring states see an opportunity to “Make it in Appalachia.”

A virtual summit this month will serve as part of public kickoff efforts to identify and support small and medium manufacturers in the region so they can play a role in the growing clean energy economy.

The New Energy Economy project is being funded by a $10 million federal grant awarded this fall. Lead applicant Catalyst Connection and ten other partners have been working over the past two months to finalize subcontracts for the effort, which encompasses 156 counties in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland and New York.

“By supporting small-to-medium manufacturers and providing training and resources, we can drive economic transformation, create in-demand jobs, and build a brighter future for Appalachian communities,” said Steve Herzenberg, co-director of ReImagine Appalachia, one of the grant partners.

ReImagine Appalachia is hosting its virtual strategy summit on January 16 and 17. The first day will focus on how to turn the Ohio River Valley into a sustainable manufacturing hub, with discussions the next day focused on community rebuilding and workforce development under federal climate infrastructure programs. 

The Appalachian Regional Commission is providing funding for the grant under the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law as part of its Appalachian Regional Initiative for Stronger Economies. ARISE supports multi-state projects to drive large-scale regional economic change.

The New Energy Economy project will provide training, technical assistance, supply chain mapping and guidance for factory and product upgrades to more than 1,000 small to medium-sized manufacturers over four years in sectors that include renewable energy, hydrogen, smart grid, green buildings, and electric vehicles.

“We want to identify and support companies that want to participate in a new clean energy supply chain or improve their factory in energy efficiency,” said Petra Mitchell, president and CEO at Catalyst Connection, based in Pittsburgh. Although much of Appalachia is rural, the region includes many towns and cities.

Mitchell said a wide range of businesses could benefit in different sectors. Planned hydrogen hubs, for example, will need lots of metal products and meters, she said. So companies making those types of things may want to think about how they could adapt existing products or develop new ones to serve that sector.

Similarly, lots of pieces and parts go into wind turbines, said Amanda Woodrum, another co-director of ReImagine Appalachia. “They’re made of things that we make already, like gearboxes and bearings.” The grant project can help identify companies that might be a good fit for making those things and provide technical know-how so they can gear up to expand.

Yet there are barriers to getting into new markets.

“Across the region, many small and medium-sized manufacturers lack the capabilities to participate in the supply chains for green energy production or green products manufacturing,” said Janiene Bohannon, communications director for the Appalachian Regional Commission. “Appalachian manufacturers and energy providers seeking to pivot to greener models face difficulties in post-COVID supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, increasingly dated facilities and technology, and lack of availability of training in said technology.”

Opportunity to move ahead

Large manufacturers often have staff or can afford consultants to grow their businesses and navigate entry into new market sectors. 

“Small companies rarely do this,” said Ethan Karp, president and CEO of MAGNET in Cleveland.

The nonprofit will be responsible for providing roughly $1 million in services to companies in Ohio counties covered by the grant. Other manufacturing extension partners will work with companies in the four other states covered by the grant.

More than half of the 32 Ohio counties rank among the 25% most economically depressed counties nationwide.  Only two are “competitive” under the commission’s designation system.

“We can really make a difference there,” Karp said. “We’re going to retain a ton of jobs, and we’re going to strengthen the output and grow our communities.”

Work in the manufacturing sector generally pays better than low-wage jobs that have employed many people in Appalachia after other manufacturing jobs left the area and the coal industry declined over the past several decades. A significant number of people in Appalachia have also become disconnected from the workforce, Woodrum said.

Now, across the five states included in the grant, the project is expected to serve 1,100 businesses, create 5,500 jobs, retain 15,190 jobs and provide $44 million worth of cost cuts, Bohanon said.

“We already have a presence in these counties,” Karp said, adding that MAGNET has already done some work helping manufacturers find opportunities for energy efficiency. MAGNET provides its educational and consulting services free of charge. Companies then invest in projects that can save money or otherwise boost their profit margins.

Lots more outreach about the grant program will follow after the upcoming strategy session for ReImagine Appalachia. Among other things, that outreach will help companies in the region think about whether they can play a role in the clean energy supply chain, even if that role isn’t initially obvious.

“It doesn’t have to necessarily be high-tech stuff,” Karp said, adding that a lot of the shift will be market driven. So, as more electric vehicles come on the market, companies will want to think about how they can be part of that growth. Or, as there’s more electrification, manufacturers may want to think about products they could supply. And then companies will need more training and technical help to expand their businesses through capital investments, any workforce issues and more.

“With the right sustainable strategy and the right investments, we can actually turn the region into leaders in the new energy economy,” Woodrum said. “The kind of manufacturing and the jobs that it creates are a big important piece of that puzzle.”

Historically, “Appalachia’s been one of the most likely places for innovation,” said Rick Stockburger, president and CEO of BRITE Energy Innovators, based in Warren, Ohio, which is not part of the Catalyst Connection grant project. “There’s no structural reason why it can’t be again, especially as we’re thinking about this new economy and how we make sure everybody can participate in it.”

Grant seeks to recruit Appalachian manufacturers for clean energy economy is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Critics say a pair of proposals to make Appalachian Ohio part of regional hydrogen hubs is likely to benefit the state’s oil and gas industry more than the climate.

The two proposals are among 21 projects competing for shares of a $7 billion pot of grant money under the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The law defines hydrogen hubs as networks of clean hydrogen producers, their potential consumers and infrastructure connecting them. At least one of the winning projects is to be a “blue” hydrogen hub, meaning it would make hydrogen from fossil fuels with carbon capture, storage and possible reuse, or CCUS.

The Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub plans to collect methane from a web of natural gas pipelines in Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky for a hydrogen production facility in West Virginia. The ARCH2 coalition includes Battelle, natural gas industry companies, the state of West Virginia, and more.

The Decarbonization Network of Appalachia, or DNA H2Hub, has the economic development group Team Pennsylvania as its project lead and is also proposing a blue hydrogen hub for Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio. Equinor and Shell are among the group’s corporate partners.

Because both hubs would use methane from the region as feedstocks, they represent potentially large customers for the natural gas industry.

“We believe there are opportunities for the industry in a regional hub or hydrogen ecosystem and that Appalachia is more suited than most areas because of our compactness, access to natural gas and manufacturing infrastructure,” said Rob Brundrett, president of the Ohio Oil & Gas Association. “There certainly would be a benefit, especially the role natural gas plays in the creation of blue hydrogen, but we think it is too early to tell exactly what and how much benefit it may be to the industry.”

Much will depend on how hydrogen from the hubs will be used, whether it will displace other current uses of methane, and overall costs and market prices for natural gas. Rough estimates from the Ohio Oil & Gas Association are that recent production has gone in equal shares to power generation, heat and chemicals.

On the high end, blue hydrogen hubs might increase natural gas consumption and industry revenues. On the low end, sales to hydrogen hubs could offset potential losses if other uses decrease as a result of the energy transition.

Hydrogen production with natural gas and capture of carbon emissions from burning natural gas have gone on for decades, said policy advisor Rachel Fox at the American Petroleum Institute. Current U.S. hydrogen production is approximately 10 million metric tons per year, she said.

“The new challenge and opportunity is to scale these two complementary technologies together,” Fox continued. “API and our members are excited about the H2Hubs program and the impact it could have on the growth of a low-carbon hydrogen economy.” She said the industry has shown 65% to 90% carbon capture rates are commercially achievable.

‘A risky gamble’

As a decarbonization strategy, a blue hydrogen hub would be “a really energy-intensive, really water-intensive thing that commits that sector to being fossil-based forever, essentially,” said Emily Grubert, an energy policy expert at the University of Notre Dame.

It’s unclear whether blue hydrogen “would even result in a net reduction of carbon emissions,” said Ben Hunkler, communications manager for the Ohio River Valley Institute. In a 2022 analysis, he said a blue hydrogen hub would be “a risky gamble,” whose costs likely outweigh environmental benefits when compared with other options, such as renewable energy.

Although industry and government “now talk about carbon capture as having been proven, it really hasn’t,” said David Schlissel, director of resource planning and analysis for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. There hasn’t been any long-term, large-scale demonstration of its effectiveness over the time frame when promoters expect blue hydrogen hubs to operate.

Methane leakage from pipes and other infrastructure would add to emissions, Schlissel said. Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and numerous studies have found methane emissions are vastly underreported.

Hydrogen can also leak, especially because its molecules are so small. “We think it leaks everywhere, but there’s no commercially available technology that can measure hydrogen leakage,” Schlissel said. Leaked hydrogen could prolong methane’s impacts in the atmosphere, researchers reported in Nature Communications last December.

Notably, both the Ohio Oil & Gas Association and the American Petroleum Institute have commented against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rules that would effectively require carbon capture and storage for fossil fuel-fired power plants.

The ability to outfit power plants with carbon capture equipment isn’t advanced enough to be feasible yet, Brundrett said. “Therefore, at this time we would not encourage any mandates regarding a technology that isn’t available to the scale required by the rules.”

It’s unclear how the CCUS technology for a power plant would differ from that for a hydrogen production facility. Brundrett said the technology “has a promising future, and we will remain engaged in the hydrogen hub process with the hope that Appalachia is able to utilize our natural advantages if awarded by the federal government.” 

A ‘moon shot’

For now, chances seem good that at least one of the projects will get funding. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Act requires at least two regional clean hydrogen hubs to be in places with “the greatest natural gas resources.” Separate provisions let the Appalachian Regional Commission provide grants and technical assistance for a regional hydrogen hub.

The federal funding is meant to act like a “moon shot,” to quickly ramp up clean hydrogen production.

“The reality is that we believe that there’s a near-term climate need that we need to be addressing, [and] that we need to think about how quick can we bring one of these technologies or a lot of these technologies to the marketplace,” said Thomas Murphy, senior managing director for strategic energy initiatives at Team Pennsylvania, during a webinar presented this summer by Appalachian Energy Future, an industry-led alliance promoting hydrogen hubs.

The DOE initiative aims to “[drive] down the cost of getting new technologies into the market,” said Grant Goodrich, who heads the Great Lakes Energy Institute at Case Western Reserve University. “You’re increasing market readiness and market demand.”

And while scaled commercial carbon capture and storage technologies don’t yet exist and can’t operate without government support, the Department of Energy’s hydrogen hub initiative could jumpstart a hydrogen economy for hard-to-electrify uses, such as high-heat industrial processes, heavy-duty transportation, or aviation, Goodrich said. That in turn might lead to effective carbon capture for other hard-to-decarbonize industries that produce greenhouse gases, such as the cement industry.

The DOE guidelines also call for projects to track how clean their processes turn out to be, Goodrich said. That should provide some accountability.

DOE’s decisions on the grant applications could come before the end of the year. DOE will also spend $1 billion to develop demand for hydrogen from the hubs, the agency announced in July.

Critics question how climate-friendly an Appalachian ‘blue’ hydrogen hub will be is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

BENT MOUNTAIN, Va. — Theresa “Red” Terry never wanted shades on the windows of her white clapboard farmhouse perched on the side of 2,600-foot Bent Mountain. Such coverings, she insisted, would only mar the 360-degree view of nature’s bounty she so relished.

“Every window I looked out, all I could see was beauty,” she said about the place in Roanoke County she has called home since marrying Coles Terry III in 1984.

Three years ago, however, she relented.

By then, crews with chainsaws, bulldozers and other heavy equipment had already spent two years devouring broad strips of hardwood forests as a passageway to truck in and bury the hotly contested Mountain Valley Pipeline. In all, pipeline investors claimed 14 acres of Terry property via eminent domain. 

If completed, the mainline of the 42-inch pipe would move 2 billion cubic feet of hydraulically fractured gas daily from the shale formations in West Virginia to the Virginia-North Carolina border 303 miles away. From there, it’s likely destined for export by way of a 72-mile extension into North Carolina.

Of course, the blinds Terry’s three grown children had installed in a room adjacent to the back porch couldn’t halt the carnage. But, drawn, they at least offered her a temporary shield.

It was in that sheltered space where a distraught Terry, 66, huddled at a table with her neighbor Mary Beth Coffey on a rainy afternoon just a week after President Joe Biden signed into law the debt ceiling relief pact on June 3.

The mood was funereal as the two friends lamented a deal that included a provision — long sought by fossil fuel booster Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia — to greenlight the completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline by deep-sixing any and all remaining permit barriers. 

“I feel like we’re in grief,” said Coffey, 65, who retired early from her school speech pathology job to devote more time to confronting the pipeline, known as MVP. “We’re dealing with the death of many things on many different levels.”

“There was hope,” Terry chimed in. “But now I’m feeling hopeless.”

The Manchin measure, the friends agreed, has squelched the voices of protesters long convinced their poorer part of the state is a sacrifice zone.

“We’ve been resisting this pipeline a long time,” Coffey said. “With this deal, our rights have been taken away. Who do we report MVP’s missteps to now? It’s a human injustice.”

Terry, who tagged both Manchin and Biden with some colorful “potty mouth” epithets, said constant fretting about pipeline explosions and aquifer pollution means she is regrettably smoking more and sleeping less.

“People wonder why I’m a wreck. Well, it’s all enough to make anyone sick,” said Terry, who retired in 2021 as a forklift driver at a distribution center in nearby Salem. “MVP has taken enough. They took away my happiness, my security … and my trees.” 

She was especially heartbroken when the pipeline excavators uprooted a backyard orchard of roughly a dozen old apple trees and a nearby scarlet oak that she had staked out as a sapling and nurtured for 22 years.

The loss of that prized oak — followed by dismissive words from an MVP spokesperson — fired up Terry, nicknamed Red as a teenager. Though her fiery hair has lightened to blond over the last several years, her passion has not.

In the spring of 2018, that fierceness guided her to yet another scarlet oak on a nearby but separate piece of Terry property adjacent to Bottom Creek. The down-to-earth, then 61-year-old Roanoke native became a local celebrity — and a global sensation — when she ate, slept and lived in a family-built, plywood tree stand for 34 straight days to draw attention to the environmental havoc MVP was wreaking in Southwest Virginia.

She was one of several handfuls of activists who took to the trees along the Blue Ridge Mountains to try to protect its delicate karst topography, formed by limestone and other soluble rocks. 

“I didn’t think I could stop the pipeline single-handedly,” Terry said, adding that she only wanted MVP to stop continuing to cut trees beyond a pre-arranged deadline. “I don’t like the idea of trees being cut for someone to run a [pipeline] through to make a profit off of us.”

‘They were so loyal’

Terry’s trial tree-sit for a few days in late March 2018 went swimmingly because of a mild spell of weather. On April 2, she again ascended to her cramped perch 30-plus feet off the ground between the oak and a maple tree — this time for the long haul. Within days, she nearly froze when rain and temperatures in the teens soaked her yoga mat, sleeping bag and blankets.

Her limited supplies included extra clothes, canned food, water jugs, a one-burner stove, a flip phone and a plastic poop bucket.

Relatives, friends and neighbors — all aware that seven generations of the Terry family had lived on the 3,000 acres they owned on and around Bent and Poor mountains — rallied around Red.

Even though MVP-affiliated officials and law enforcement officers stymied their efforts to supplement her food and cigarette rations, her loyal cadre offered moral and spiritual support by spending time near the base of her camp day and night.

Coffey, who has known Terry since their children attended elementary school together, said that solidarity was a reflection of the pleas for social and environmental justice that echoed along the entire pipeline route.

“It was hard to engage with Red because of law enforcement,” Coffey said about her daily hikes to Terry’s scarlet oak. “But we wanted to be present with her and for her to let her know she had our support.

“We all recognized that she fully understood the vulnerability of all the living things in the woods and that she wanted to protect them.”

That outpouring of love and dedication bolstered Terry’s willpower and sense of community in her corner of Appalachia. 

“Having all of those people show up made me feel safe,” she said. “They were so loyal. It was the whole neighborhood and some people I didn’t even know.”

After officers relented on their earlier scheme to “starve” her out of her arboreal hideaway, she persevered by choking down some of what she described as the “tasteless turkey bologna sandwiches and cheap cookies” her supporters sent up to her regularly.

It wasn’t the second-rate meals that prompted her to exit the tree stand in early May. Alas, a federal district judge had set that deadline, with the caveat that the $1,000 per-day fine for violating the edict would go directly to the companies constructing the pipeline.

“I didn’t want that money going to MVP,” Terry said. “That’s what brought me down. The overhanging threat was that a U.S. marshal would take me out of the tree.”

Disappointment with two Joes in D.C.

Even though climate-induced Canadian wildfires choked Washington, D.C.’s air with smoke, Terry and Coffey were determined to join demonstrators near the White House on June 8 for an anti-MVP rally organized by People vs. Fossil Fuels.

The two women, toting hand-lettered signs, boarded a 50-passenger bus at 7 a.m. for the 4.5-hour ride. Early that hazy afternoon, they joined a vocal — but somewhat subdued — swarm of roughly 300 protesters commiserating, holding signs aloft and applauding speeches.

The overall sentiment was that Biden had betrayed them to assuage Manchin.

Many greeted one another as the friends they had become since the pipeline was a mere line on a map in 2014. While mainstream organizations opposed the pipeline, it was primarily grassroots groups that heeded the advice of the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, to “make good trouble.” 

Over the last nine years, they have been optimistic that simple economics, multiple court rulings in their favor, and momentum they had generated would mothball MVP, just as its cousin, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, was jettisoned in 2020. 

Consider this: the price tag of the joint venture by power company Next Era Energy and large Appalachian gas companies, led by eventual operator Equitrans Midstream, has ballooned from $3.7 billion to $6.6 billion. Plus, the owners have paid several million dollars in penalties for hundreds of water quality violations along a winding, two-state path that crosses close to 1,000 rivers, streams and wetlands. 

Coffey always figured the 107-mile stretch in Virginia characterized by slopes as steep as 80 degrees, as well as underground sinkholes, caves, aquifers and streams, would put the kibosh on the pipeline.

“All along, we thought the water would be the difference that would save us,” she said. “But it turns out the water didn’t matter.”

Even though Coffey’s Roanoke County home is surrounded by wetlands, the pipeline is being buried barely 300 feet from her front door.

“For so long we were going to meetings, fighting this,” Terry said. “And we were blocking MVP, beating this and stalling the pipeline. Now they got what they wanted and are running roughshod over us. We’re exhausted.”

She doesn’t regret hurling herself into the MVP maelstrom, although she admits that the political awakening it engendered means she is less cheerful and happy-go-lucky.

Terry is proud — but not boastful — that people as far away as Australia learned about the plight of Appalachia when articles, films and photos about her tree-sitting ricocheted around the world.

“People need to realize what they’re doing to us with this pipeline,” she said. “If water is going to be a scarce commodity, then why is our government giving companies permission to ruin it?”

Terry acknowledges that the blinds on her house can’t block out the grinding clang of construction equipment or the dynamite blasts blowing up rock along the pipeline right-of-way.

But if she closes her eyes, she can retreat to those childhood days when she would find refuge in the limbs of the mimosa and apple trees in her Roanoke backyard.

“That was my safe place,” she said, smiling at the memory. “I guess I’ve been a tree-hugger all my life.”

For tree-sitter, no hiding from heartbreak of deal to greenlight Mountain Valley Pipeline is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

This story was originally published by Mountain State Spotlight. Get stories like this delivered to your email inbox once a week; sign up for the free newsletter at mountainstatespotlight.org/newsletter.

OSAGE — Growing up in 1960s Osage, Mary Jane Coulter remembers when her town had its own shops, schools and restaurants. Today, Coulter oversees a small museum in her hometown, commemorating the 13-community-long Scotts Run area that starts less than five miles from Morgantown.

It’s not the same community as the one in the black-and-white pictures hanging on the museum’s walls. Many of the homes pictured were demolished and the families pushed out in the late 1960s for the construction of Interstate 79, and the mines that used to employ Osage residents have shuttered. 

Land that had belonged to the community until the 1990s, when the town council voted to dissolve itself, was sold to nearby local governments to pay off community debts, according to what locals told Goldenseal Magazine in 2011. Today, there are only about 80 people living in the unincorporated community, which is mere minutes from newer shopping centers like the University Town Centre in Granville, Westridge in Morgantown, and the Monongalia County Ballpark that opened in Granville in 2015.

Only a handful of Osage businesses, including a shoe repair shop, some music studios and a steel drum studio, continue to operate among a small downtown of mostly abandoned buildings that West Virginia University students painted bright colors a few years ago.

“I never dreamt that it would end up like this,” said Coulter, who contributed to a book on the community. “I think a lot of the change was forced on us, due to the industry no longer being here — the coal industry.”

The underground coal mines displayed in old photos throughout the museum no longer exist in the region like they once did. One of Monongalia County’s last active mines, about 16 miles west of Osage in Blacksville, closed earlier this fall.

Osage’s troubles aren’t that different from other communities in western Monongalia County, or even those throughout the state. Residents have the same needs as most West Virginians — affordable, working utilities, help with abandoned properties, new employers and roadway repairs. Yet despite existing in the shadow of Morgantown, one of the state’s largest metro areas, and having had decades to transition its economy away from coal, the community still struggles.

“A lot of people don’t think of Monongalia County as being a coal community, but really, it was,” said local shop owner Ron Justice. Justice helps run the Mannette steel drum shop and studio across the street from Coulter’s museum. He also works for WVU and was a former mayor of Morgantown.

“In today’s world, if someone mentions Monongalia County and links it to a coal community, there’s a perception that they have other things, they have the university or they have Mylan Pharmaceuticals. … but if the economy in Osage was the same as it was years and years ago, you wouldn’t have any empty storefronts,” he said.

And though Monongalia County has numerous good-paying jobs outside of the coal industry, unlike some areas of the more isolated southern coalfields, one sentiment is the same in both regions: residents are wary that a new influx of money and promises from elected officials will turn things around.

‘Kicking the can’ 

There are still coal mines in both West Virginia’s northern and southern coalfields, but employment is only a fraction of what it once was: the number of jobs in the industry have declined 80% over the past decade.

Places like Osage seem particularly well-situated for an economic transition: there’s easy access to non-coal employment — in industries like health care, higher education and hospitality — thanks to the proximity to Morgantown and WVU.

But Al Anderson, who grew up in Osage  and has lived there most his life minus his 20 years away in the music industry, says even in Monongalia County, other major employers like WVU are thanks to the county’s successful decades of coal mining in the early 20th century. 

“All those things were built up more because of here,” said Anderson, who owns a shoe repair shop next to the Mannette drum studio. “All the money — you got 40 mines, you got a lot of money that comes out of these hills. And all our fathers worked in those mines, back in the day.”

And now communities where coal workers lived, like Osage, are facing decline despite neighboring one of the state’s largest cities. Residents presented a list of requests to address their crumbling infrastructure — road work, sewer system updates, help with redeveloping old buildings and attracting employers — to a bipartisan group of state lawmakers earlier this month. 

The group has been hosting meetings around the state in coal communities. According to House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, they’re charged with “really determin[ing] what our coal communities need to succeed so they can come back to us with solid recommendations and then drive those solutions home to the full Legislature when we come back next session.”

The Monongalia County meeting in the Scotts Run area was the bipartisan group’s fourth so far, following two meetings in the southern coalfields and one in Marshall County. Others are planned later this month.

“This is not just another kicking of the can down the road,” co-chair of the working group, Delegate Mark Dean, R-Mingo, told community members. “Your ideas, your input, will be legislation.”

While the committee was set up to “help find solutions to the problems facing coal communities,” lawmakers seem, perhaps understandably, focused on billions of federal dollars available specifically for coal communities, as well as money from the recently-signed $1 trillion infrastructure bill.

“The challenges of coal communities are real, and there are probably going to be more and more challenges in the near future,” said Delegate Evan Hansen, D-Monongalia. “But, we have a huge amount of federal resources that are directed into coal communities, and billions of dollars that will be coming to West Virginia, or at least be available to West Virginia, if we know what we want to do with these funds.”

But Osage community members are unsure when or whether any of their requests will be addressed. 

“We have people come from Charleston every other year,” Anderson said. “They come to speak at our street fair, and then we never see them again.”

And of the roughly 50 people who showed up at the Monongalia County meeting to share their priorities with the lawmakers, few identified themselves as living in the former Scotts Run coal communities. Many lived and worked in Morgantown and suburbs like Star City. Some were associated with WVU, or working as advocates for the environmental and energy sectors. There were also congressional staffers and representatives of groups like the United Mine Workers of America. 

Some of the money lawmakers are talking about, including $38 billion from federal agencies for coal communities and billions more in federal coronavirus aid, already have been identified and allocated. Other pots have recently been approved, including $1 trillion nationally through the new federal infrastructure bill. And some are still up in the air, like the money attached to the Build Back Better Act.

County commissioner Tom Bloom, who serves the western and southern part of Monongalia County, said he can see a large chunk of that new funding going to broadband. 

“People are asking me to bring factories and businesses out there, but the lack of infrastructure doesn’t tend to bring those businesses,” Bloom said.

But in Osage, Coulter says the problems are worse than no internet.

“I know it’ll never look the way it did before,” Coulter said. “But the county could buy those [properties], or the state, and sell them to the entrepreneurs who don’t want to leave Mon County.” 

Coulter says they need street drains cleaned to prevent flooding. They need potholes filled and sidewalks built, so people aren’t walking along the road. They need public officials to help with shuttered businesses that are falling apart, which could easily be redeveloped or demolished and replaced.

These problems — like the decades-long decline of West Virginia’s coal industry — didn’t happen overnight. And time is short for lawmakers to turn ideas from their community meetings into actual legislation that could be considered when lawmakers return to Charleston in early January.

Reach reporter Emily Allen at emilyallen@mountainstatespotlight.org

This historic northern WV town highlights the needs of the state’s coal communities is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.