'An abusive sin': Rev. William Barber joins activists in Richmond challenging Mountain Valley

'An abusive sin': Rev. William Barber joins activists in Richmond challenging Mountain Valley Pipeline


Civil rights leader the Rev. William J. Barber II preached to a crowd of several hundred in Richmond on Saturday against the Mountain Valley Pipeline, calling projects like the proposed natural gas line “an abusive sin” that would harm the poor.

Barber was the keynote speaker at a rally in advance of a state regulatory board vote on an aspect of the proposed natural gas line. The line would run more than 300 miles from West Virginia to Virginia with an extension from Pittsylvania County, Va., into North Carolina. The proposal has led to years of intense political fights over environmental quality in all three states.

The Virginia State Water Control Board is to vote Tuesday on whether to allow pipeline construction in wetlands and across more than 200 of Virginia waterways. There will be no public comment at the meeting, so groups opposing the pipeline coordinated the rally at Byrd Park’s Dogwood Dell, where people symbolically announced each of the project’s more than 300 violations of Virginia’s water protection laws.

Barber noted that the developers of the defunct Atlantic Coast Pipeline pulled the plug on that project in 2020. It faced similar opposition from environmental groups and landowners.

Read more: https://greensboro.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/an-abusive-sin-rev-william-barber-joins-activists-in-richmond-challenging-mountain-valley-pipeline/article_a1544b12-9d84-5aad-9e34-af8505accf12.html