Country-folk duo use words and music to fight proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline

The proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would run from West Virginia to North Carolina, is drawing plenty of criticism in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, most notably from a country-folk duo made famous by the “Prairie Home Companion” radio show, Frances Stead Sellers reports for The Washington Post. Musicians Robin and Linda Williams object to the pipeline that is designed to "carry up to 1.5 billion cubic feet per day of methane for more than 500 miles through the Shenandoah Valley, across the Blue Ridge Mountains and over the Piedmont and then the Tidewater to North Carolina, burrowing its way through both public and private lands." (News & Advance map)

A spokesman for energy giant Dominion Recources "explains that if everything stays on schedule, the company could get approval for the project next summer, start construction later that year and go into operation before the end of 2018," Sellers writes. "About 300 landowners have objected, he says; 52 changed their minds after getting a follow-up call; and the pipeline company has so far filed 58 lawsuits. There is a state law about surveying private property, the spokesman says, and 'as long as we follow the statute, by law we don’t have to ask for permission.' He’s also aware of at least two lawsuits that landowners have filed, alleging that the state statute violates the U.S. Constitution."

And then there's the music of Robin and Linda Williams, who wrote the protest song, "We Don't Want Your Pipeline." The song goes:

We don’t want your pipeline, we don’t want your pipeline
We’ll take the sunshine, the water and wind!
We’re gonna put a stop sign on Dominion’s pipeline.
Go tell your neighbors! Go tell your friends!

They’ll bring cough and corruption like we’ve never seen,
Gouging our Forest, our mountains and our streams.
Five hundred miles long and fifty yards wide,
Blasting through our homes with their pipeline

Now sinkholes, explosions and gas-line leaks,
You hear it on the news almost every week.
Dominion says ‘Don’t worry,’ but it ain’t wise,
To be flirting with disaster with their pipeline

These Richmond operators don’t care ’bout you and me.
They just want to make a killing when they got more than they need.
And you can bet they’re safe in their houses so fine,
Far, far away from the pipeline.

Now these Big Boys say, ‘It’s a done deal.’
But nothing’s done as long as we’ll,
Stand together for our rights and our property,
And keep pushing back against their pipeline