Story, photos and captions by: Aislinn Antrim
Graphic by: Kelly Bumb
Phillip Flagg pokes his head out from the tarps that make up his treetop home and looks down. He carefully lowers an empty paint bucket the 50 feet to the ground. A friend puts a Tupperware container with pigs-in-a-blanket (made with fake meat) into the bucket and Flagg pulls it back up. It’s his lunch.
“Are you bored up there?” the friend — his ground support — calls.
He laughs, then says no. “There’s too much Star Trek to watch.”
They discuss recent sightings of the “Raccoon King,” a neighborhood raccoon who works with an opossum and a skunk to raid the compost pile. They make it sound like the dog next door.
“Everyone here is a radical environmentalist,” Flagg said. “No one is going to take issue with them. Time passes pretty slowly up here, but I’d say it’s been pretty good.”
His platform is slightly larger than a double-size mattress with 14 buckets hanging beneath, each with a purpose: food, books, water and other essentials. A solar panel charges Flagg’s phone. The ground crew says that he gets a better signal in the treetops than they do.
Flagg hasn’t touched the ground in more than five months, since he climbed the tree on Oct. 12 to block construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 303-mile line running from northern West Virginia to the border of North Carolina. With the announcement of a 70-mile extension into Rockingham and Alamance counties in North Carolina, called Mountain Valley Pipeline Southgate, the protesters’ role has taken on new importance to North Carolinians.
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The protesters sit just outside of Elliston, Virginia, 25 miles west of Roanoke in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The camp is about a mile back along the gravel road that gave them their name — Yellow Finch. They’re part of Appalachians Against Pipelines, a loose group of individuals with the same mission: fighting pipelines through the mountains they call home. The organization uses nonviolent direct action — physically blocking construction with their campsites, tree sits, and their bodies. Their goal is to delay or even stop the pipeline.
“Forests have already been fragmented, roads have already been covered in muck and mud from erosion, sinkholes have already opened up, and more,” Appalachians Against Pipelines said in a statement.
The Mountain Valley Pipeline has faced opposition ever since its application was filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in October 2015, and tree-sitters have played a crucial role. The first sitters were on Peters Mountain in February 2018, lasting 95 days. Other protesters followed suit, but Flagg and the other Yellow Finch tree sitters have lasted the longest: 205 days and counting.
The protesters have a myriad of concerns: water contamination, nature protection, disruption to neighboring home owners. Mountain Valley says they’re following all measures outlined in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Upland Erosion Control, Revegetation, and Maintenance Plan, as well as the more specific procedures for wetlands and bodies of water. Precautions include trench breakers to prevent erosion, as well as soil additives and seeding requirements in disturbed areas. Despite these steps, the protesters say they’re protecting some of the last standing trees along the pipeline’s path.
Shawn Day, a spokesperson for the Mountain Valley Pipeline Southgate project, said there are more than 35,000 miles of natural gas pipelines already operating in North Carolina, and he said that these lines are the safest way to transport natural gas.
“While we respect industry opponents’ views, we are concerned that the actions taken by a few of them have placed their health and safety at risk,” Day said. “We believe everyone should express their views safely and lawfully.”
Mountain Valley LLC seems relatively unbothered by the protesters, but other affiliates have voiced their displeasure with the protesters.
Marcellus Shale Coalition’s blog, Marcellus Drilling News, published an article saying, “Sometimes radicals who have ‘jumped the shark’ and descended into complete lunacy go up a tree — literally.” Still, the protesters say they aren’t stopping anytime soon.
There are two tree sitters including Flagg, and about 10 people in the ground support camp. Flagg and his other tree sitter—who he calls his “tree-buddy” — aren’t the original two, but they’ve been up there the longest. Other than Flagg they all remain anonymous, choosing “forest names” that change frequently but remain just as secretive as their given names. The ground support brings food, books, or other necessities to the tree sitters, from their camp just a few yards away.
The steep hill is surprisingly homey, dotted with tarps all grouped around a central gathering area. There’s two fires — one for warmth and one for cooking — as well as a ramshackle building erected from donated plywood. It’s mostly for storage, but includes a small greenhouse with a few plants.
Their kitchen is a pair of folding tables that sag beneath the canned food, plastic bins and plastic bottles that will be recycled. Donations appear frequently, and today they’re excited for a new bottle of Dijon mustard.
Flagg said the ground support is his lifeline, both literally and figuratively.
“I’m somewhat isolated from the outside world,” he said. “But since I’m right next to the camp and I talk to them every day, I don’t feel isolated from them.”
A legal case has been pending since December, in which Mountain Valley requested an injunction against the tree sitters— in effect, permission to remove them from the land. Flagg and his “tree-buddy” are perched on the easement, where the pipeline company has rights to the land. The ground support camp is directly next to the easement on private property. The judge has yet to rule, however, and Flagg said he’s starting to think she never will.
“At this point we’re mentally preparing to be here for the long haul,” he said.
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Many locals affected by the pipeline have been voicing their opinions on various Facebook groups, though they worry that their concerns aren’t being taken seriously.
Jammie Hale, a farmer in Pembroke, Virginia, is one of these locals. He said three sides of his property border the pipeline, and while they haven’t started construction yet, the preparations have already been disruptive. He lost water for 18 days in August when his well was affected. When heavy rain passed over the construction, Hale’s well was flooded and nearly destroyed. For nearly three weeks he had to go to the nearby creek for 100 gallons of water each day. Fixing his well ultimately cost Hale $1,050.
“That has never happened in the 10 years since we have lived here,” Hale said. “I believe in the Constitution, but our politicians and local governments are for rent and for sale. I’ve done it all —I’ve cussed the pipeline people, written letters. When our government fails us, it’s left up to the people.”
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Mountain Valley says its pipeline is 70% complete. The network of protesters and neighbors, however, doubt that. The company’s goal is to have it in service by the fourth quarter of 2019, with the Southgate extension not too far behind. The extension is currently in the middle of a regulatory review process by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which must issue a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity. The company is anticipating a decision on the certificate in March 2020, and Day said the project remains on schedule to be in service by the end of 2020.
As a separate project with its own FERC process, the Yellow Finch Tree Sitters don’t seem to have much influence in blocking the Southgate extension. There are, however, other protesters popping up in North Carolina.
Mebane’s town council heard local opposition speak at a meeting in August, including people from the Sierra Club and the Occaneechi-Saponi tribe in Pleasant Grove. The Alamance County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution opposing the pipeline in Sept. 2018 — the first county in the state to formally oppose an interstate pipeline. Farmers in Rockingham and Alamance counties have spoken out against the use of eminent domain on their land, and an organization called No Mountain Valley Pipeline Southgate has been formed to organize opposition.
Still, Day said the pipeline aims to improve the region’s infrastructure.
“North Carolina’s population is expected to increase by nearly 2 million people between 2020 and 2035,” Day said. “The North Carolina Utilities Commission has recognized the need for additional interstate natural gas pipeline capacity.”
PSNC Energy, the distribution company who would benefit from the pipeline has added about 100,000 new customers since 2009, and the MVP Southgate project would provide the needed supply of natural gas to meet residential and commercial demand.
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Back at the Yellow Finch Tree Sits, life continues slowly despite the constant activity of protesters and legal fights in the world outside. They’re enjoying the slightly warmer weather, and several protesters said it’s an interesting way to watch the seasons change. They’ve lasted through the oppressive heat of late summer, had snowball fights in the winter, and now post pictures of the blooming trees on the Appalachians Against Pipelines Facebook page. During the summer they slept in hammocks, but transitioned to tents covered in tarps for warmth once winter set in. Soon enough, they say they’ll go back to stringing hammocks between the trees.
They’ve gathered together a small library for entertainment. Perhaps unsurprisingly it consists mostly of activists’ memoirs. A few supporters met with German environmental activists at Virginia Tech on March 22, so they summarized the discussion for everyone else. They laugh when they realize that the German organizers’ book — Ende Gelande — is already in their library.
The German protesters faced violent retaliation from authorities in 2017, and the Yellow Finch protesters’ faces grow solemn as they remember that possibility. They’re all aware of the dangers.
“The best case scenario is that the company goes out of business and the pipeline is stopped,” Flagg said. Realistically, however, he admitted he doesn’t think that’s how this will end. “If the injunction were granted and the marshals were sent, who knows what they could do.”
Regardless of the legal maneuverings, Flagg said he’s sure of one thing: he won’t leave the treetops easily.
