Story by Ethan Horton
Cover by Carson Elm-Picard
Andrea Childers has been to every Person County Board of Commissioners meeting since the start of November. None have blown her away like the meeting on Monday, March 18.
The five commissioners sat at the dais for the better part of an hour discussing environmental and community concerns of two residents about a one-acre junkyard — everything from fence heights to stormwater to truck traffic.
The commissioners consulted with their attorney, county staff and the junkyard project’s applicant to make sure everyone could accommodate the changes, which were meticulously confirmed.
Just three-and-a-half months earlier, the commissioners approved a nearly 500-acre methane gas storage site for Dominion Energy with no discussion. No consultation with the attorney, staff or the applicant.
At that December meeting, three dozen community members — including Childers and Anderson Clayton, a Person County native and the N.C. Democratic Party chair — spoke out against the site. They cited a lack of jobs created for Person County residents, concerns about air and water quality and a lack of transparency from Dominion Energy and the county.
No one spoke in favor.
When the public comment period closed, the commissioners immediately approved the project. No discussion. Unanimous. 5-0.
It was clear county commissioners were in favor of the project even before the vote.
A September press release from the county said Dominion had emphasized its role as a responsible and involved corporate citizen.
“I am excited about this public utility project and the benefits it brings to our county and region, and I am grateful to Dominion Energy for selecting this location in Person County,” Board of Commissioners Chair Gordon Powell said in the press release. “This is an excellent example of property owners and industry leaders working together in a progressive manner for the benefit of Person County.”
The project is moving forward despite the county’s unified planning ordinances not allowing facilities like this. The planning director told the state that the county was working on creating a new set of zoning ordinances, including a zoning type that specifically allows liquified natural gas facilities.
That new set of ordinances has still not been approved, but construction on the project has already begun and is scheduled to be completed in 2026.
Childers submitted more than 200 questions from local residents, some about the planning and zoning inconsistencies, to the county commissioners to either answer themselves or with Dominion.
“I did ask them on Nov. 6 — ‘Let’s find the answers to these questions,’” Childers said. “‘Let’s slow down. Let’s take a breath. Let’s get the answers to these questions.’ Never got answered, never got considered.”
But by the time the project was approved a month later, none of the commissioners had responded to the questions or even acknowledged they were sent.
In fact, of the dozens of times Childers and her husband have contacted the commissioners, they have only gotten two substantive responses.
The first was an email early in the process answering a question about whether or not the storage would be above ground. The second was at a meeting in early March, three months after the approval, when the chair of the board of commissioners told Childers he had passed along the 200-plus questions to Dominion.
Theresa Ahrens, another Person County resident opposed to the project, pleaded with the board to communicate more effectively during the public comment period in the March 18 meeting.
“Have you ever disagreed with your loved one?” Ahrens asked the commissioners. “And how did you resolve it? Did you give each other the silent treatment? Did you maybe ignore them, not answer them when they ask you questions? How did that go if you did?”
Ahrens, Childers and others have yet to receive answers to their hundreds of questions.
Environmental concerns
The Moriah Energy Center, the project approved by the commissioners in December, will store and liquefy gas transported on two of Dominion’s lines — which are in turn fed by the Transco pipeline that runs from Texas to New York.
The site plans cover a 465-acre spot in southeastern Person County and include two 25-million-gallon gas storage tanks, to be built over two phases. It would be completely surrounded by rural neighborhoods, farmland and forests.
Dominion spokesperson Persida Montanez said in an email statement that Dominion is building the facility to respond to increasing demand in the region. She said the site was chosen for its proximity to existing gas lines and that Dominion worked to “minimize impacts to the community and environment” in its site selection.
Initial estimates indicate the site would release around 65,000 tons of climate change-causing greenhouse gasses every year — equivalent to the emissions of almost 13,000 cars in a year.
Dominion said in its application for an air quality permit that annual hazardous air particulate matter emissions — which have been linked to heart and lung problems according to the EPA — are expected to reach almost four tons.
Childers’ house is just downstream from the site, and one of her biggest concerns is water quality. Every house in the area uses well water, which is much more susceptible to groundwater pollutants than urban, treated water.
The EPA says about 15 percent of Americans use private wells as their source of drinking water, and about one in five of those wells has a higher concentration of contaminants than the benchmark for human health.
In 2008, on a similar site operated by Piedmont Natural Gas Company in Huntersville, North Carolina, state environmental officials found contaminated groundwater exceeding EPA standards for trichloroethene, a cancer-causing chemical.
After an anonymous complaint and an investigation, the state found that Piedmont had improperly stored waste on the site, causing chemicals to leak into the nearby soil and groundwater, including wells.
When the leak was discovered in Huntersville, Childers said, nearby residents were put on water provided by the local government, rather than their potentially contaminated private wells.
If a similar groundwater leak occurred at the Moriah Energy Center, nearby residents wouldn’t have the same luxury — the only municipality providing water in the county is Roxboro, the county seat, which is several miles from the site.
Dominion has said it will follow all local, state and federal water regulations and that it will place monitors on the property to determine if there have been leaks.
Dominion has also said there will be no surface wetland or stream impacts on the 70 acres where the plant would be constructed. But, according to Childers’ husband, Paul, who has studied the site meticulously, the proposed development sits on a hill from which the runoff would run into nearby streams — including the one that runs by their home.
NoMEC
At the March 18 Person County Board of Commissioners meeting, Katie Moore was the first of three public speakers to take to the stand.
The meeting was at 9 a.m. on a Monday, a time the commissioners use for meetings once a month. Five people showed up with yellow circular pins with the letters “NoMEC” on them — short for Neighbors Opposed to Moriah Energy Center.
The NoMEC group was founded in mid-September 2023, originally using the name “No Moriah Energy Center – Until We Know More.” By the end of October, more than 80 people were attending community-organized meetings and more than 125 people attended a November planning board meeting to oppose the project.
In February, NoMEC residents filed a complaint against the county and the commissioners with help from the Southern Coalition for Social Justice to stop construction of the facility. The complaint, filed in state court, argues the commissioners ignored public health and environmental concerns from residents and that the approval was an abuse of the board’s discretion.
Moore was one of the five wearing the yellow NoMEC pins at the March 18 meeting.
She opened her statement by addressing the junkyard for which the board had just approved environmental conditions and regulations. She said she appreciated that the board required ground and water testing, and that those regulations should be extended to several other facilities in the county to maintain the feel of a clean, safe, peaceful environment.
After all, she said, the safe, clean, peaceful environment is why she moved to Person County in the first place.
“The issue that I have is that doing that piecemeal for small facilities doesn’t make a bit of sense, and it certainly does not make sense to do that for a small operation when you are not willing to press for that from a company that is much larger and from a facility that has a much, much larger environmental impact than this junkyard that y’all were just discussing,” Moore said to the commissioners. “It makes me feel like I’m losing my mind, to be honest.”
Moore’s professional expertise is in air quality, and she had spent the days before the meeting poring through Dominion’s air quality permit application for the site.
In that application, she told the commissioners, Dominion said it does not need to maintain a Risk Management Plan — which would tell nearby residents about contingency plans if something goes wrong at the facility.
Major accidents at liquified natural gas facilities are incredibly rare, but a 2012 explosion in Venezuela killed 47 people and caused a fire that raged for 96 hours. In 1973, at least 40 people were killed in an explosion on Staten Island.
The Clean Air Act requires facilities using extremely hazardous chemicals are required to maintain a Risk Management Plan. But Dominion argued that because the site’s storage would fall under the N.C. Department of Transportation’s regulatory power, it does not need to maintain a Risk Management Plan.
Childers, also wearing a yellow NoMEC pin to the meeting, was signed up to speak after Moore.
She walked up to the podium. She told the commissioners her name and that she has lived in Person County for 31 years. And then, in a stern voice and with her hands in her sweater pockets, she began her statement, looking straight at the commissioners.
“I just sat here and listened to you gentlemen, this board, give more consideration to a one-acre salvage facility than you gave to a 50 million-gallon bomb that you are putting 2,300 feet from my house,” she said. “Shame on each and every one of you for doing so.”
Childers also pointed out that during the commissioners’ discussion on the junkyard, residents living near the proposed site stood up and walked to the front of the room, out of turn, to speak to the commissioners. She said if it were NoMEC members who stood up and spoke out of turn, they’d be asked to leave.
Like Moore, Childers went on to ask the board to require Dominion to produce an environmental impact statement — a comprehensive document detailing the influence of the facility on the surrounding area.
Environmental impact statements are generally only required for government-run projects or projects on government-owned land. Dominion’s new site would fall under neither category, and it is therefore not required by law to produce the statement, though it could create the report voluntarily.
Dominion did not respond to a request for comment on producing an environmental impact statement.
By the time Childers finished her three-minute speech by casting shame on the commissioners again, her husband, Paul, was smiling in a pew two rows back.
She grabbed her notes from the podium and turned around to sit beside him.
She’s been at every meeting since November 6 to make sure the commissioners see her — to make sure they see a face impacted by their actions.
And normally, speaking at meetings is cathartic for Childers. She gets to speak her mind, and that helps her feel better.
But this time was different.
“That whole meeting was just so absolutely devastating to me,” Childers said. “Because of how they behaved. I was devastated that whole week. I could not shake what they had done.”
Great article. Thank you for this in-depth coverage of an important issue to so many in Person County.