People of faith find their place in new wave of anti-pipeline activism
Last month, three major pipeline projects in the US were canceled or temporarily halted in the span of 24 hours—due in large part to grassroots activists and their increasingly creative and sophisticated legal strategies.
On July 5, Dominion Energy and Duke Energy announced they were canceling plans to continue with their Atlantic Coast Pipeline, citing the cost associated with the “incremental delays” caused by incessant legal challenges. Then, the next day, a federal judge suspended construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline, pending a new environmental review, and the Supreme Court excluded the Keystone XL pipeline from eligibility in a fast-track permitting process.
While these new efforts haven’t garnered perfect success—for example, an appellate court blocked the Dakota pipeline shutdown about a week after it was ordered—they do illustrate a sea change in the way communities respond to pipeline projects.
