@a9ymous @BrianCoy @GovernorVA @DomEnergyVA @richmondtimes 1/ "Over 100 years we’ve owned that land, since my ancestors were slaves,” ....But the future of this pastoral community...is clouded by Dom Energy’s plan to build a...compressor station in Union Hill that would pump fracked natural gas through the proposed...Atl Coast Pipeline."
@a9ymous @BrianCoy @GovernorVA @DomEnergyVA @richmondtimes 2/ "Opponents say the station will emit toxins that cause respiratory problems, allergies, fatigue & other health issues & that its depressurizing “blowdowns” will be as loud as a jet engine.They contend [this represents] an assault on a historically significant black community."
@a9ymous @BrianCoy @GovernorVA @DomEnergyVA @richmondtimes 3/ "Preservation Virginia agrees, citing Union Hill among its endangered places in 2016. “Post-Emancipation African-American settlements & burial sites, like those at Union Hill in Buckingham Cy, reveal the successes & struggles of gens of African-Americans in Va,” [they]wrote."
@a9ymous @BrianCoy @GovernorVA @DomEnergyVA @richmondtimes 4/ "Advocates for Union Hill detect a pattern, citing a civil rights complaint by North Carolina advocacy groups that federal regulators failed to assess the Atlantic Coast Pipeline’s disproportionate impact on people of color."
@a9ymous @BrianCoy @GovernorVA @DomEnergyVA @richmondtimes 5/ A door-to-door census of 98 households in Union Hill found that 85 percent of its residents are African-American and one-third are descendants of freedmen from Variety Shade or other plantations....Most of these residents are elderly."
@a9ymous @BrianCoy @GovernorVA @DomEnergyVA @richmondtimes 6/ "Mary Finley-Brook, a member of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Environmental Justice, said there are as many as 500 slave burial grounds in Buckingham. On the Variety Shade acreage, “I have been to the site and seen the estimated 400 graves,” she said."
@a9ymous @BrianCoy @GovernorVA @DomEnergyVA @richmondtimes 7/ "Opponents note that the owners of a 68-acre tract of the former...plantation fetched a $2.5 million price from Dominion....Meanwhile, Union Hill residents — including descendants of the enslaved — have not even received crumbs for land that could soon be worth peanuts."
@a9ymous @BrianCoy @GovernorVA @DomEnergyVA @richmondtimes 8/ Dominion's Aaron Ruby said "'we made several changes to the facility, all with the goal of minimizing its impact on the community. For ex, we added sound buffers and full station silencers to minimize noise during normal operations & ‘blowdowns’ that occur every 5 years,'"
@a9ymous @BrianCoy @GovernorVA @DomEnergyVA @richmondtimes 9/ “But a May 18 email from a Dominion Energy employee contradicts that 'every five years' scenario....Molly Plautz, Dominion Energy’s federal affairs policy adviser, said the operator scenario under consideration was '10 per unit per year for maintenance purposes only.'"
@a9ymous @BrianCoy @GovernorVA @DomEnergyVA @richmondtimes 10/ "Rev. Paul Wilson, whose Union Hill and Union Grove Baptist churches have become the epicenter of resistance to the project, said 'Dominion has not really treated our community well....They treated us as though we didn’t even exist.'”
@a9ymous @BrianCoy @GovernorVA @DomEnergyVA @richmondtimes 11/ "It’s a common industry practice for utilities to ram such projects thru marginalized communities 'and make you appear to be nonexistent,' Wilson said. 'In the end, you’re really just collateral damage, & that’s how they treated us. And we refuse to be treated that way.'"
@a9ymous @BrianCoy @GovernorVA @DomEnergyVA @richmondtimes 12/12 @GovernorVA the ball is in your court. There are no neutrals here. Which side are you on?
