Evan Popp
The view from Franconia Ridge on the New Hampshire section of the Appalachian Trail. A proposed gas pipeline would span about 300 miles from West Virginia to the southern part of Virginia, running alongside the trail for about 15 miles and impacting its visual quality for around 100 miles.
Each August, for the past dozen years, my family has set out on a backpacking trip. We’ve hiked Vermont’s Long Trail, which runs from the state’s border with Massachusetts up the spine of the Green Mountains to the border with Canada. And in recent years, we’ve traversed parts of the Appalachian Trail.
The longest hiking-only footpath in the world, the Appalachian Trail is a 2,190-mile trek ranging from Georgia to Maine, passing through fourteen states. My dad and I have completed the Vermont and New Hampshire portions of the trail and will finish the final section in Maine this August.
Coming in the weeks before I return to school, the trip has always been a last chance for an extended dive into nature and an opportunity to gain some perspective.
Sometimes that comes from a harrowing experience—everyday problems don’t seem as pressing when you're being pummeled by a driving rain at 5,000 feet on an extended mountain ridge line. Sometimes it comes from the small things the trail has to offer—the first rays of sunshine coming up over the mountains, a loon’s call over an undisturbed pond.
Whatever it is, I’ve never felt so alive as I do after a grueling fifteen-mile day spent clambering over boulders and up steep terrain. Maybe that’s because as the miles pile up, so too do the spectacular mountain views, leafy green forest canopies, and picturesque sky-blue lakes.
The Appalachian Trail, Long Trail, and other walking paths occupy a special place in my life. And they also represent a crucial outlet for the millions of people who tread along these trails each year. But, as with so many natural treasures, these wild places are increasingly in danger from human development. In the case of the Appalachian Trail, that threat is the pending construction of a natural gas pipeline.
The Mountain Valley Pipeline, proposed by EQT Corporation and Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC, would span about 300 miles from West Virginia to the southern part of Virginia. It would run alongside the Appalachian Trail for about 15 miles, at one point burrowing under the path, and would impact the visual quality of the trail for around 100 miles. If built, the pipeline will ferry natural gas to the “Mid-and South Atlantic regions of the United States,” according to the pipeline’s website. The companies hope to begin building late this year.
The project wouldn’t be the first pipeline to cross the Appalachian Trail. In fact, there are 58 pipelines that intersect with the path. But while the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) doesn’t usually fight these projects, Andrew Downs, the ATC’s regional director of Central and Southwest Virginia, says the Mountain Valley Pipeline is different.
“Most pipelines, energy corridors, and similar things are developed where ATC and advocates for public land have a strong voice early in the process, so that we can help identify more appropriate locations and locations that should be avoided,” Downs tells The Progressive. “And that didn’t take place with the Mountain Valley Pipeline.”
Downs says the pipeline, which he argues was planned using incorrect data, would also expose hikers to a large, industrial eyesore at the expense of beautiful mountain vistas.
“From our perspective, that affects how people are able to reflect and recharge and find fellowship with nature,” Downs says. “They’re out there to have a real peaceful experience and an experience that is separate from the normal everyday grind.”
If the pipeline goes through, Downs warns it will undermine the administrative protections of the Appalachian Trail and other prominent paths such as the Pacific Crest Trail and Continental Divide Trail. That’s because those trails have adopted the Appalachian Trail’s “layers and layers of administrative regulations and protections,” which the Mountain Valley Pipeline would affect.
“Because this pipeline was planned so poorly, it would require fundamental changes to the way the ATC is protected on national forest land,” Downs says. “So if you can undermine that protection of the Appalachian Trail, you can undermine [trails] anywhere.”
If you can undermine the protections of the Appalachian Trail, you can undermine trails anywhere.
Other groups have also warned against the pipeline. Under the Obama Administration, the EPA cautioned that approval of a project like the Mountain Valley Pipeline could lead to “overbuilding, unnecessary disruption of the environment and unneeded exercise of eminent domain.” In addition, a coalition of seven local Republican officials in Virginia have announced their opposition to the project. And legislation has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate to require a more detailed analysis by federal agencies to ensure the pipeline and other similar projects don't damage the Appalachian Trail and National Forest lands.
But pipeline opponents still have a tough fight ahead of them. In May, the state of West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection denied a request to hear an appeal of the pipeline’s Clean Water Act certification. In Virginia, Governor Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, is also supportive of the project.
“New natural gas pipelines, like the Mountain Valley Pipeline, will diversify our energy mix, reduce our commonwealth’s carbon emissions, and help build a new Virginia economy,” McAuliffe said in a statement.
Courtesy Evan Popp
The author enjoying one of the Appalachian Trail's breathtaking vistas.
The pipeline plans must still be reviewed by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. Downs is hopeful that the Forest Service in particular could step in and modify the project so that it’s acceptable to the ATC. He says the ATC isn’t totally opposed to the pipeline, just its planned location.
“There are alternatives that would be drastically better, not only for the Appalachian Trail, but private property and all public land in question,” Downs says.
Throughout the country, trails and pristine wilderness are under attack from development.
Another fixture of long-distance hiking, the Pacific Crest Trail—which ranges from California’s border with Mexico to Washington State’s border with Canada—is increasingly “threatened by development, clearcuts, inappropriate barriers and unsafe road walks,” according to the Pacific Crest Trail Association. About ten percent of the path is on private land, and, according to the association, there is “little in place to help protect the trail experience for future generations.”
Large swaths of the American West have already been devastated by development. In 2016, the Center For American Progress released a report called “The Disappearing West,” which found that the West loses a football field’s worth of natural area to human development every two and a half minutes. Urban sprawl and oil, gas, coal, and other energy and mineral development were the two biggest causes of the West’s vanishing natural lands between 2001 and 2011.
During his presidency, Barack Obama tried to combat the rapid pace of land development by creating myriad national parks and monuments. By the end of his time in office, Obama had placed more acres under the protection of the national park system than any other President.
With so many other important issues pounding at the door, it’s up to those who treasure wild lands to explain why they are important and should be preserved for future generations.
But Obama’s efforts at conservation are under attack by a Republican Congress eager for public lands to be developed by big business interests. And the momentum is with those who wish to use wild areas to turn a profit.
There is resistance, though. For example, Bonanza Flats, a popular hiking and camping destination in Utah, was bought up by Park City to protect the land from developers. And the mass mobilization of people against the Keystone XL Pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock are encouraging signs of resistance to overdevelopment.
But with so many other important issues pounding at the door, it’s up to those who treasure wild lands to explain why they are important and should be preserved for future generations.
Perhaps no one does this better than nature writer Terry Tempest Williams.
“Wilderness is not a place of isolation but contemplation,” Williams writes in The Hour of Land, her book about the national parks. “Wilderness is a knife that cuts through pretense and exposes fear. Even in remote country, you cannot escape your mind.”