A Pipeline Runs Through It

Gaslighting: Third in a series about opposition to a wave of new natural gas pipelines, power plants and storage facilities on the drawing board in North Carolina.

Listen to an audio version of this story below.

EDEN, N.C.—A man sat in a white unmarked truck, which had backed into a small parking lot near a natural gas pipeline at the Dan River. A similar truck, a similar man, had been there a month before. 

Shelley Robbins, the senior decarbonization manager for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, looked past him and ambled down a gravel driveway toward Draper Landing, a public boat launch to the river and a popular tourist destination.

It was October, and the leaves had turned from a deep summer green to shades of russet and saffron. A blue jay squawked to defend its territory. Into the long grass someone had pounded wooden survey stakes, topped with an orange flag and the word “wetlands” printed in black marker. The air reeked of a dead animal. A vortex of vultures circled overhead.

This was the same river that had been inundated with toxic coal ash in February 2014 when, about four miles east of Draper Landing, a coal ash pit at Duke Energy’s Dan River Steam Plant breached. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated at least 39,000 tons of toxic coal ash and 27 million gallons of ash pond water were released into the river. Even after the cleanup, some of that material settled to the bottom, where it remains.

Now fossil fuels again figured in the river’s future. Robbins had studied the pipeline maps and their arcane legends—metering stations, rights of ways, interconnections. And here it was: Near the river, a cornfield and a copse of trees was the nexus of an immense natural gas buildout planned for North Carolina. 

All of the projects—pipelines, compressor stations and liquified natural gas plants—would emit tons of methane, a potent greenhouse gas and driver of climate change, as well as other pollutants into the atmosphere. These projects raise local concerns over permitting loopholes, safety and public health.

A segment of Transco’s 10,000-mile pipeline already runs under the Dan River at Draper Landing; the company plans to add more pipeline in four counties in North Carolina. 

The planned Southgate extension of the Mountain Valley Pipeline would also be built here, and would feed gas to a third pipeline on the property: the T15 Reliability Project. 

The T15 is a complicated undertaking. The existing T15 is a 63-year-old pipeline that runs 37 miles through Rockingham and Caswell counties; it includes a small compressor station near Ruffin.

But because of its age, the T15 needs to be upgraded. A new pipeline would be laid near the existing one, with an additional eight new miles of line coursing through Person County, where Duke Energy plans to build two natural gas plants that would use the fuel to generate electricity. 

To accommodate the larger pipeline and higher transmission pressure, a new, larger compressor station would be built, Ruffin II, near the Rockingham-Caswell county line.

Until recently, Public Service Co. of North Carolina, a small subsidiary of Dominion, owned the T15. Now it’s owned by a Canadian energy giant. In October, with approval from the N.C. Utilities Commission, Enbridge announced it had purchased the T15 project as part of a $4 billion deal for all of Public Service Co. of North Carolina’s natural gas business.

The natural gas for these projects would come from fracking operations in Appalachia or gas plants along the Gulf Coast. The gas would then be transmitted to any number of destinations: homes and businesses, Duke’s proposed new plants in Person and Catawba counties, data centers in North Carolina and beyond. Utilities like Duke could even resell the gas to other companies, which in turn could export it.

Even seasoned utilities experts like Robbins are perplexed by the complexity and speed of the buildout. It’s like assembling a jigsaw puzzle without a picture, with a timer about to ring. 

Each part of the expansion is fragmented and operates under different rules, depending on whether it crosses state lines. Unlike the proposed Transco and MVP Southgate projects, the T15 runs solely within North Carolina. As a result, it falls outside of several federal environmental and safety oversight requirements. 

“It’s disheartening,” Robbins said. “I feel like we’re at an inflection point here where there is so much that we are about to lock in.”

Robbins is 56, with shoulder-length dark blonde hair and bangs, and an affinity for large hoop earrings. She wore slate blue fingernail polish and a letter bead bracelet that spelled out “Harris Walz” and “Smash the Patriarchy”—a gift from her adult daughter, a medical student. Her son is a filmmaker who documents the demise of glaciers.

Robbins lives in Durham, but grew up in Thomasville, North Carolina, a small city south of Winston-Salem that lies just east of the Transco pipeline. In college she didn’t envision forging a career in energy. Her father was a banker; Robbins was an economics major at Duke University. Then she discovered some aspects of macroeconomics—complex systems that interact and influence one another—also applied to ecology and the natural world.

Slowly, the pieces of her calling began to come together, and she’s spent much of the last 20 years fighting fossil fuels. 

Sixteen years ago, Robbins was living in South Carolina. A colleague recommended she read the book With Speed and Violence by Fred Pearce. It details the tipping points caused by climate change—melting permafrost, stalling ocean currents—that will propel the planet past the point of no return. 

The book permanently changed Robbins’ thinking. Even so, she thought such global upheavals were far in the future. Now, she said, “the 2008 me could not fathom what 2024 me is seeing.”

At Draper Landing, Robbins was getting her bearings as she set out to travel the pipeline’s route. The day trip allowed Robbins to get outdoors, to give her a break from stuffy hotel conference rooms, where she often gives presentations on energy issues. 

She strode back toward the car. From afar, she stopped to look at the large Transco metering station, a system of valves and pipes that regulates pipeline pressure. Most people driving by had no idea what they were seeing, she thought.

Robbins took in the picturesque field and forest by the river, but to her eye, the massive pipeline infrastructure, the poles and warning signs were hard to ignore.

She checked that she was standing on the public right-of-way. 

She took a picture.

Then she headed off down Fieldcrest Road, past the man in the white truck.

July’s Hearing on the Enbridge Sale 

Three months earlier, in July, about 20 people gathered in a windowless, beige hearing room at the N.C. Utilities Commission in Raleigh. Half of them came to testify about Dominion’s plan to sell its natural gas subsidiary, Public Service Co. of North Carolina, to Enbridge.

For the deal to go through, the seven-member Utilities Commission—five appointed by the governor and two by the legislature—had to approve it. And if they did, Enbridge would be North America’s largest natural gas utility by volume transmitted. The company, which has an uneven safety record, would add the Moriah Energy Center, a 50-million-gallon liquified natural gas plant in southeastern Person County, the Ruffin compressor station and the T15 to its massive portfolio.

This event was a do-over: Dominion had failed to provide enough advance public notice for a June hearing. No one showed up.

The Utilities Commission ordered a second hearing, but even now, there were snags in the proceedings. The notice, which arrived to Dominion customers by postal mail, contained a word salad of technical terms. One man thought he’d been summoned to court. The downstairs doors to the building were locked, and at least one person had to wait 10 minutes before a security guard passed by to let her in. 

Several people testified they were concerned about Enbridge’s safety record.

“We’re concerned about Enbridge’s motives,” testified Juhi Modi, North Carolina field coordinator for the nonprofit Appalachian Voices. “How can we allow a company with this safety record to do business in North Carolina? We can’t afford more methane pipelines that will lock us into natural gas for decades.”

Appalachian Voices was working to defeat or delay the T15 pipeline and has advocated for neighbors, including Andrea Childers, who were trying to stop the Moriah Energy Center. Childers lives in Person County, where Dominion is building the huge liquified natural gas plant a half mile from her home. She routinely appeared before government officials about the natural gas buildout. Tonight, she testified again: “I’m pleading with you to do the right thing.”

On its website, the company noted it had only six reportable spills totaling 4,620 gallons of crude oil and liquid fuels last year.

But the company has accumulated 100 environmental violations since the year 2000, according to Good Jobs First, totalling $283 million in federal penalties. The bulk of those fines stem from a 2010 oil spill that saturated 40 miles of the Kalamazoo River watershed in Michigan. Enbridge employees did not detect a 6-foot break in Line 6B, which gushed oil for 17 hours before the company reported it.

Company spokesperson Persida Montanez told Inside Climate News that after the Michigan incident, the company invested $14.5 billion “on maintenance, inspection and leak detection across our cross-continent pipeline network—keeping our pipes healthy and fit for service. … It transformed the way we think about safety, and how we operate at Enbridge.”

The Rev. Keith Sexton, a minister with the United Methodist Church, asked the commissioners to deny the transaction on the basis of climate change. “Natural gas is not clean energy,” Sexton said. “That’s a marketing lie.”

Two months later, the Utilities Commission quietly approved the transaction. Enbridge now owns all of Dominion’s natural gas infrastructure in North Carolina. 

The Ruffin Compressor Station

As Shelley Robbins traveled east along the pipeline route, she noted the presence of several solar farms along the way. One was equipped with panels that automatically tilted to follow the sun. She envisions a future where solar energy and battery storage replace the polluting smokestacks, pipelines and compressor stations. A future when utilities can manage energy demand, paying customers more money to reduce their usage at peak times.

“When you fight something, you need to have an alternative,” Robbins said. “You can’t just say, ‘No, don’t do that.’ You need to be able to say, ‘What are we going to do instead?’”

About 15 miles east of Draper Landing, she passed the abandoned Ruffin school, a hulking brick building with boarded-up windows and holes in the roof. She marveled at a corner lot where a large brown cow and a black-and-white goat were grazing. Then she arrived at the Ruffin compressor station. Compressor stations increase the pressure of gas to send it down a pipeline; they usually have to be built every 75 miles or so to keep the gas moving.

The Ruffin station is a white square building about the size of a small church about 150 feet off the road and surrounded by a metal security fence. Valves and pipes jut from the ground. It connects to the existing T15, but because the new pipeline would be larger—42 inches in diameter, about the size of a large patio table—the existing Ruffin facility would be torn down and a new compressor station must be built about two miles away. 

Ruffin II will be larger, with greater horsepower, its four turbines fueled by natural gas. It will emit significantly more pollution than the original compressor station, according to its state air permit, approved last month: 81 times more carbon monoxide, 636 times the levels of volatile organic compounds, 265 times greater emissions of particulate matter, and 131 times more nitrogen oxide, an indirect greenhouse gas that produces ozone. 

High levels of ozone can damage the respiratory system and cause or worsen asthma as well as other lung disorders, according to federal health officials. It would also emit smaller amounts of benzene and formaldehyde, classified by the EPA as known carcinogens.

Add another 307,670 tons of greenhouse gases, and, if not for additional emissions controls, Ruffin II would be classified as a major pollution source, subject to stricter federal and state regulations.

Robbins thought the Ruffin station looked small and quiet, seemingly harmless, tucked in a pocket out of the way. But she knew what was coming and that it would be disruptive, ugly and dangerous.

She stood on Ruffin Road and took a picture. 

Robbins had been tracking T15 developments from her home office back in Durham. There, bookshelves are arranged with photos of her children, a rock collection and a vintage camera. On the wall hangs a watercolor of Robbins and her daughter, painted by Robbins’ mother.

A standing desk is outfitted with two computer screens, where she analyzes spreadsheets and arcane utilities commission and environmental documents, then writes blog posts for her organization. 

As part of her research she found state and federal documents that showed two existing T15 segments in Rockingham County, just north of the Ruffin compressor station, had become exposed at the surface.

Before the sale to Enbridge, Dominion had been publicly underscoring the safety of its proposed pipeline project. Meanwhile, an engineering firm hired by the energy company wrote to state and federal regulators that by June one of the exposed segments “has become much more severe.” 

The work required water quality permits, state and federal documents show. Had those pipeline segments been outside a waterway, it’s possible the public would have never known there was a problem, which an Enbridge spokesperson now says has been repaired. 

Robbins had seen issues with Dominion pipelines before. In the early 2000s, when she worked in South Carolina, a segment had also popped out of a creekbed. The pipeline had been like that since it was installed in the 1960s, Robbins said. 

Robbins wondered how long the T15 had been exposed. Like so many questions about natural gas companies, she doubted she’d ever get an answer.

At the End, the T15’s Eight-Mile Dogleg

The final leg of Robbins’ winding excursion along the proposed route of the T15 took her through Caswell County, where the pipeline would run through rolling hills and pine-studded hunting and fishing lands owned by the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission. On Murray Road, a dead end, the T15 would graze the Dan River Work Farm, a minimum-security state prison. 

If there were an emergency, the only way out is through the woods and across the North Fork of Rattlesnake Creek. 

The prison has an emergency evacuation plan, but it is not public.

Eventually, the T15 arrives in Person County, where for eight miles, an all-new segment of pipeline would dogleg north to send natural gas to Duke Energy’s proposed new plants at Hyco Lake. 

Here, Robbins saw the gentle ridges and glens of Semora Road that sway like a hammock. About five miles from the lake, the tree line breaks and two smokestacks pierce the horizon. They look like white pencils with black erasers topped by a blinking white light to warn low-flying planes.

These are Duke Energy’s coal-fired Roxboro plants, perched on the shore. With the state Utilities Commission’s blessing, Duke plans to replace them with two new natural gas-powered plants on adjoining land it owns. The T15 will deliver the gas to Duke, sourced from MVP Southgate or possibly Transco. And here, Duke can burn it or resell it to other utilities and energy companies.

The T15 would run directly in front of Woodland Elementary School, a one-story brick building built in 1950. The Duke power plants are about a quarter mile away. 

Robbins was shocked. She had seen the plants and Woodland Elementary on Google Earth maps, but to stand at the edge of the school’s driveway, to see the smokestacks looming right there, she felt stunned, then furious. 

She envisioned the kids who spend eight hours a day, nine months a year, for six years of their lives here. The proposed gas plants will be even closer to the school, she thought, spewing emissions at them. 

She thought of the regulators, ensconced in offices and meeting rooms far away.

Our system of environmental protection has failed these children. Regulators will defer to the emissions rules and pretend these children aren’t here. 

She wanted to ask every regulator and decision-maker at every step of the process: Would you send your child here?

Those are the airborne hazards. Below ground, the diameter of the pipeline and its maximum allowable operating pressure determine what the industry calls the “potential impact radius.” 

Within these areas, there are different classifications of risk: Prisons, like the Dan River Work Farm, and schools, like Woodland Elementary, are especially vulnerable because they’re difficult to quickly evacuate.

Montanez, the Enbridge spokesperson, said the maximum allowable operating pressure is still being determined as the T15 is designed, but will be at transmission strength. That is generally from 200 to 1,500 pounds per square inch, also known as psi. By comparison, a typical car tire is inflated at 28 to 36 psi.

Montanez said the information about the operating pressure isn’t public for security reasons.

However, State Utilities Commission records from 2024 show that segments of a pipeline, then owned by Dominion, had an operating pressure of 628 psi at the time of the inspection. The pipeline served the Durham region.

At that pressure, with a 42-inch diameter pipeline like the one planned for the T15, people could be injured or even killed within 700 feet of the line in case of an explosion, not accounting for wind, topography or walls, according to the Pipeline Safety Trust.

In a worst-case situation, the staff and 222 students in kindergarten through fifth grade would have one primary route to safety: Semora Road, which is two lanes and parallels the pipeline. A secondary route scurries through a maze of cul-de-sacs near Hyco Lake before reaching another main road. 

The Person County School District did not respond to questions about evacuation plans for Woodland Elementary.

“The myriad terrible things those pollutants do to the human body, especially over time. That is why this Roxboro plant sitting next to the elementary school is, in my mind, unconscionable.”

— Shelley Robbins, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy

Until the federal Clean Air Act became law in 1970, the students of Woodland Elementary breathed air heavily polluted by emissions from the Roxboro plants. Even now, with stricter regulations, state records show students and staff are still exposed to more than 3,000 tons of nitrogen oxide, more than 2,500 tons of sulfur dioxide, and 570-plus tons of carbon monoxide each year.

Switching from one fossil fuel to another doesn’t solve all of the air pollution problems. The new gas-fired Roxboro plants would still emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Although emission levels of some pollutants would be sharply reduced, according to Duke Energy’s own modeling, they won’t be eliminated. More than 1,100 tons of nitrogen oxide, 51 tons of very fine particulate matter and 258 tons of sulfur dioxide would still come from the plant each year. 

And levels of carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds would increase, state records show, by 15 percent and 50 percent, respectively.

“The myriad terrible things those pollutants do to the human body, especially over time,” Robbins said. “That is why this Roxboro plant sitting next to the elementary school is, in my mind, unconscionable.”

Epilogue

Five miles east of Woodland Elementary lies the 1,350-acre Person County mega park, an area designated to attract industry. For nearly a decade, county officials have been courting hundreds of companies to locate there, but found no takers—until this year.

Fewer than a half dozen people in Person County knew the identity of the buyer. All of them were silenced by non-disclosure agreements with the company, public meeting minutes show. There were no job numbers, no tax revenue estimates. Just a map showing the location of the mega park in relation to Duke Energy’s planned new natural gas plants, a high-voltage transmission line and a “proposed natural gas line”—the T15. 

Many residents felt uneasy about the secrecy. “We don’t know what it is,” said Andrea Childers, who lives in Person County. “Nothing good is going to come of this.”

In late October, the county and Microsoft announced the company had purchased the mega park, although neither would disclose what will be built there. 

Microsoft had already reported it would invest more than $1 billion in four data centers in Catawba County, near Duke Energy’s other two proposed natural gas plants. 

Since there would be so much energy available to the mega park, Robbins suspected Microsoft could construct a new data center there. These are large server farms where computers hum 24 hours a day, consuming voracious quantities of planet-warming energy.

She had hoped Microsoft would choose to power its operations with solar power and battery storage. But given the supply of natural gas, that seemed unlikely.

Then, in early November, Robbins received troubling news: The N.C. Utilities Commission approved Duke Energy’s much-anticipated carbon plan, which directs the utility to bring more than 3,600 megawatts of new natural gas online within the next seven years. That includes enormous amounts coming in on the T15, Transco and MVP Southgate lines. 

The plan also delays the date Duke is required to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by five years: 2035 instead of the original 2030.

The Utilities Commission made its ruling just six weeks after Tropical Storm Helene destroyed towns and livelihoods in western North Carolina. The storm, revved up by climate change, killed 101 people.

Robbins had read the decision. Although it ran 183 pages, it mentioned climate change just eight times, seven of them quoting public commenters. She thought the ruling showed a lack of concern for the effect climate change was having on the state, in real time.

Several days later, after the polls had closed on a warm Election Day, environmental advocates like Robbins struggled to comprehend the fallout from Donald Trump’s sweeping victory in the nation’s nasty, deeply partisan presidential race. 

Trump has promised to expedite the approval of natural gas pipelines, roll back air emissions rules and withdraw from the Paris Agreement, all of it now endangering the progress the U.S. has made in combating climate change. In an earnings call two days after the election, Duke Energy’s chief financial officer said the utility could revert to burning more coal as a result of the Trump administration’s proposed energy policies.

Robbins felt crestfallen. The Biden administration had allocated billions of dollars in clean energy investments. Now the Trump administration could counter those advances by incentivizing fossil fuels.

Robbins needed to get away. She headed to the coast for a few days where she could stare at the sea. She took her computer with her. There was more work to do.