The Life and Times of Pipeline Fighter Mara Robbins

Protests Work: Atlantic Coast Pipeline Dismantled

by Jack R. Johnson 07.2020

On July 5, 2020, Dominion Power and Duke Energy formally announced that they were canceling their efforts to build a 600 mile pipeline from West Virginia, through Virginia, to the North Carolina coast. Known as the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), it ended not with a bang, but a resounding whimper.

Few people were more gratified by this turn of events, and even less surprised than Mara Robbins. Since 2015, Mara and hundreds of other activists across the country have thrown themselves into a pitched battle against the ACP as well as its companion project, the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). You will not read about them in the literature from Dominion or Duke Energy, nor on the business pages of their last stock reports, but it was largely thanks to their creativity, organization, persistence, and courage that two of the largest energy behemoths in this country had to turn their backs on a 6.5 billion dollar investment. This is a small part of that story.

I first met Mara Robbins at a State Water Board Control Meeting in the late fall of 2017. The meeting was notable for the number of state police cars in attendance. There were thirty-seven shiny gray Virginia state police cars on that cold Monday evening. As I strolled around the parking lot for the meeting place—a community center in Henrico County with the heart-warming slogan, “strengthening families, uplifting communities,”—the presence of state security was even more in evidence. In addition to thirty-seven state police cars, there was a Henrico Special Events Vehicle, a Henrico Multiple Casualty Events Vehicle, multiple ambulances, a fire truck, a State Police Mobile Command Center Vehicle, two Hazardous Material Vehicles, and a Henrico Police Van. Plus, just to be on the safe side, private plain clothes security provided by Dominion Power.

This was not your daddy’s state water control board meeting. This was Dominion Power’s and DEQ’s hand-picked state water control board meeting—and things were not going the way they had planned.

For starters, approximately 80 percent of the audience was hostile to the idea of approving the 401 water certifications for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline—the nominal purpose of this meeting. Not just against, but positively hostile toward. Many had traveled from faraway Nelson, Buckingham or Floyd counties or even from out of state. Nearly two years ago, when the pipeline was first being surveyed, these individuals organized to fight it, and had since formed advocacy groups, and rapid reaction teams like Friends of Nelson County, Appalachian Mountain Advocates, Wild Virginia, to name a few. There were also larger environmental organizations like Southern Environmental Law Center, Chesapeake Climate Action Network and the Sierra Club, plus progressive umbrella organizations like Alliance for Progressive Virginia, all coming together to form a potent grassroots, activist force. They had lawyers and individuals dedicated enough to sit through long-winded meetings and public comment periods. Despite Dominion seeding many of the comments with individuals on their payroll, despite the phalanx of state police officers and Henrico County officers, the room was distinctly anti-pipeline.

As the public comment period progressed, the activists, because they were frequently admonished to remain quiet, showed approval of speakers by using an old ‘Occupy’ trick—snapping fingers or waving hands. They uniformly turned their backs on speakers with whom they disagreed, or hissed loudly. They were disruptive, effective and sometimes entertaining.

One activist decided to sing her opposition to the pipeline. Another, after stating her credentials as an environmental engineer and planner, said bluntly, “This proposed pipeline is the poorest plan I have ever seen.” Another activist said, “This plan is a disaster.”

A young man with beard and colorful head wrap was even more direct when he addressed the board: “I see through all of this. I see through your suits. You are bored. You are so afraid. You are so scared of a single moment of truth . . . this world is dying, you must know that. Our rivers, our land, our people, our climate — it’s all dying. If you can’t face that, perhaps something is dying in you.”

That was when Mara Robbins stood up. Dressed in signature blue ‘Water is Life, Protect It’ t-shirt, bandanna and sweats, she delivered a bold declaration, stating in part:

“If you will not protect our water, we the people will. If you will not safeguard our water resources, we the people will. If you will not stop the pipelines, we the people will.”

All the activists, most of the room, in fact, stood with her. She ended on a poetic note: “Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.”

When I caught up with her outside, she was breathless and excited. She showed me her transcript and then whispered, “I thought for sure they were going to kick me out of there.”

She laughed and smiled broadly—she didn’t know yet that her words would prove prophetic.

The meeting grew progressively more contentious. An apparent Ayn Rand fan announced that all those in opposition to the pipeline were anti-capitalist frauds. He shouted, “I stand against denigrating the virtue of profit!” Which was greeted by a stunned silence as the crowd tried to determine if he was actually serious, and then there was the combined hissing of all the activists voicing their disapproval like the sound of an enormous snake.

Near the end of the meeting, an amendment was in the works and the water board chairman, Robert Dunn, decided to chide the activists, saying, “Maybe when you get older, some of you will begin to understand how these things work.” That did not go over well.

One activist shouted from the back of the room, “I’m sixty-seven!”

And this was when Mara Robbins, who was amazed that she had not been ejected as she spoke through her declaration, earlier, finally was ejected. Wearing a bright blue bandanna, she and another activist were led from the meeting by state police officers because of their loud protests against the chairman’s words. Outside the meeting, she said simply, “We will not allow this pipeline to be built. If they exhaust us of legitimate means, then we take it into our own hands.”

She’s been taking it into her own hands ever since.

**

The next time I met Mara Robbins was at Bent Mountain nearly a full year later. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline permit was in limbo by then, but permits for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) had been approved, and not withstanding a multitude of complaints, construction and legal processes to acquire more land was still going strong. In fact, it was going so strong that MVP’s use of eminent domain was forcing people off their land, and in some instances, into the trees, to protest.

Red Terry was one of those individuals. At 61 years of age, Red climbed a fifty-foot tree on Bent Mountain, Virginia in an effort to prevent the Mountain Valley Pipeline from blasting a hole through her property. When I went to talk to her, she had been up in the tree since April 3.

Mara was there, of course. She was one of the many supporters who had gathered there to offer encouragement, despite the yellow police tape, an arbitrarily cruel rule that prevented Red from being resupplied with food. The security didn’t allow her to recharge her cellphone, or laptop, and, of course, no cigarettes. On the ground below her a band of plastic yellow tape formed a perimeter with these words: ‘Police Line.’

Hiking in, I saw Mara, amid the lean-tos, orange pup tents, blue prayer flags and ribbons that decorated the path along the woods. She made many of the signs herself, signs that read: “Water Is Life” or “We Will Win.”

Her presence was ubiquitous among the many protests that are now dotting the western portion of our state, as was her message: “Water is Life.” A message so obvious it should not have to be repeated, but there were many who didn’t seem to hear it or understand what threatened the water daily with the various pipeline constructions.  In fact, this message was so strong, that a portion of Mara’s Water Flags project, which graphically represents this legend, is now being housed in the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. No small feat. Yet the way Mara and most the people at this encampment saw it, the main thing was stopping the pipeline. If it was allowed to continue, the Mountain Valley Pipeline would have destroyed the water quality of Bottom Creek and Bent Mountain; it would have destroyed the landscape, along with their property values, along with the climate: a kind of devil’s trifecta.

Mara’s activism started early. When she was just a toddler, her father, an ex-academic from the research triangle in North Carolina, decided he was sick of that lifestyle and sick of the so called Reagan Revolution. So he took his family and went to live off the grid in Floyd County, Virginia. She recalls pumping water by hand when she was young and cooking on a wood burning stove. A graduate of Hollins University in Creative Writing, she sticks to a simple, sometimes nomadic life style.

We recently talked at the Earth Folk Collective in Richmond, Virginia about the ongoing struggle against the pipelines and some surprising successes she and the activist community have had lately.  Here’s a portion of that interview:

Q: It looks as though the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) was finally defeated, or at least canceled for the duration. What do you think contributed to its failure? I've heard everything from lackluster natural gas prices--markets saturated combined with Covid-19 depressing the oil prices to environmentalists and lawyers making such pipelines prohibitively expensive. What's your take?

 A: The ACP died some time ago, so far as I see it. This is why the legal challenges to the ACP were so much more successful than the MVP (Mountain Valley Pipeline). Take the example of the Blue Ridge Parkway: why was the MVP permitted to cross when the ACP was prohibited? Duke and Dominion did not necessarily need the ACP to supply fracked gas if they could get it elsewhere and the court of public opinion was swayed strongly in our favor. I think Dominion had already decided to simply buy the gas from the MVP and table the ACP; the event in Union Hill featuring Al Gore and Rev William Barber from the Poor People's Campaign gave their slick PR team a conniption fit. Dominion is an investor in the MVP Southgate project (where they want to extend the MVP 72 miles into NC) and agreed to purchase 80% of the gas. This is why the FERC approved the project; they need to see viable investors above all. I wish any of the rest [of the reasons against the pipeline] swayed them, but they're unlikely to stop anything that might line their greedy pockets.   

Q: The Mountain Valley Pipeline still looms out there, as you say...what are the next steps to stop MVP that you might share with the readers?

A: Educate yourself--this can be a complex situation. And keep fighting. Support the Yellow Finch Blockade, which has fended off the MVP for two years come September. Support the efforts of Indigenous organizers such as Crystal Cavalier, who's guiding the efforts to oppose the proposed Southgate extension. Keep pummeling ALL of your decision-makers to stop the MVP in whatever way they possibly can—Covid-19 concerns, water, endangered species….and SHOW UP. These days that can be effective via virtual platforms far more often than it used to be, and if you're near the route you can still document what is happening. 

There’s an indigenous event, ‘Say No to MVP’ at https://www.facebook.com/events/743899223012023/  that you can attend virtually tomorrow [July 25,2020] at 10:00 a.m.

Q: Are you optimistic (or more optimistic now) that MVP can be stopped?

A: I have been optimistic for six years! Why in the world would I stop now? The resistance to this project is unprecedented. The tide has turned and continues to rise. I believe wholeheartedly that we will win.

Q: You have a new book coming out, Seeing Red about Red Terry and the Tree sit at Bent Mountain. Can you talk about that a little bit? 

A: Yes, the release date will probably be early fall, though the virtual book may be available sooner. The book was most certainly inspired by Red Terry and her month and 3 days in the trees at 61 years old, the title also reflects a deep need to communicate the effects of trauma, rage and cognitive dissonance on the movement. This was essential to me when I began to write the book in the fall of 2019; I never imagined it would be released in the midst of a pandemic.

Q: Where can we buy it when it does come out?

A: Propertius Press.  http://www.propertiuspress.com/  

Q: Can you describe how you first got involved with anti-pipeline activities?

A: Sure. I have always taken issue with injustice, whether it's environmental issues or social issues. I helped found Floyd County’s P-Flag: Parents and friends of Lesbians and Gays because we did not have any organization to back up those kids in high school and the administration wouldn't let them organize. So that's the sort of thing that I would get involved with. But I never immersed myself as much as I did when I found out about the Mountain Valley Pipeline. That was July of 2014. At that point, it was still in the investment phase. Floyd County was unique in that we had a frame of reference. Dominion had tried to build the Greenbriar Pipeline through Floyd in the early 2000s. So we had had several organizations and a lot of community conflict over it. They proceeded quite a-ways before the project was tabled.

We didn't really have to reinvent the wheel [when we heard about MVP]. There were a lot of people who knew what to do. Within weeks we had a very strong core group. We had huge community meetings. Our first meeting consisted of 127 people at the country store. By the middle of August, we had 14 active committees. And I found myself at the nexus of this incredible network of people all doing a lot of amazing things. I suppose I carried that mantle, in part, because it was asked of me, and in part because a friend of my father's said, I think you can do this.

The pipeline was rerouted after a few months. They didn't want to deal with us. There was a lot of other reasons for the move, but ultimately it shifted a quarter mile outside of Floyd's border.

So we stayed active in the fight within the surrounding area. As per usual in many of these cases, we did all the right things. We went to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission [FERC] hearings. We stated our objections. We went to the Department of Environmental Quality [DEQ] hearings and meetings. We stated our objections. We had valid proof, you know, scientific reasoning, peer reviewed comments. All those things didn't matter.

A dear friend of mine in West Virginia, Elise Keaton, said early on, you have to do all the things. But ultimately, all it does is help them build a better pipeline. And that's what we did. For a long time.

Then, in December of 2017, they approved the 401 permits. A 401 permit is basically a water quality certification.  Without it, they can't build. That's part of why the Constitution Pipeline was not built in New York.  Because the 401 permits were denied. This permit authorization is happening under our DEQ and the State Water Control Board [SWCB].

The function of State Water Control Board is to advise the DEQ on water permitting.  They [the SWCB] have shown reckless disregard, with the exception of Roberta Kellam, who was not only removed from the board, but accused by [DEQ Director] David Paylor of “working for the opposition.”

Q: Let’s break that out a little bit for those who don’t know the backstory. Roberta Kellam was the SWCB member who was deeply concerned about the pipeline’s violations.  She was subsequently replaced by Governor Northam.

In an op-ed to the Roanoke Times, she wrote:

“Based on what I observed along 30 miles of MVP construction, it continues to be unclear to me why the DEQ has not instructed MVP to stop work in accordance with its authority.

“My tour of the MVP corridor traversed areas of very steep slopes, floodplains and freshwater wetlands. I observed situations that were clearly a threat to water quality, such as unprotected steep slopes, pipeline segments floating in water and erosion and sediment control measures in disrepair.

“But what struck me even more than the environmental impacts was meeting the people dealing with the pipeline construction and its failed erosion control measures on their own properties — farmers and other land owners who graciously invited me to visit their properties and see for myself.

“It was clear that many people felt that DEQ was not protecting their water quality to the extent promised during the water quality certification hearings and that they had lost faith in the DEQ.

“From time to time during 2018, I saw photographs taken by local residents of situations on the ground that appeared to threaten water quality.

“In response to my inquiries about site conditions, I was repeatedly told by DEQ Director David Paylor that the local residents are “untruthful” and their photographs were “misleading.” In the week before Hurricane Florence, when weather forecasts indicated potential catastrophic rainfall in the region, Director Paylor told me that work had stopped even though video and photographs provided by local residents showed otherwise.

“When I further questioned Director Paylor about apparent water quality impacts, he accused me of “working for the opposition” with such ferocity that I felt compelled to defend myself in writing, referring to our responsibilities to protect water quality.”

Roberta Kellam’s replacement, James Loften made the motion to hold the hearing that ended up affirming MVP’s permit. The motion was supported by Paula Hill Jasinski, a newbie appointee as well, who was attending her first formal board meeting.

A: Right, I think that after that [after the SWCB meeting that affirmed the MVP permits], there were many people who just felt that we had done everything we could --we had exhausted all legitimate means. This is December of 2017. It was February of 2018 that the first tree sits went up…Bent Mountain was when I really became intimately involved.  On April 2nd of 2018, I got a call from my friend Genesis Chapman, and I could barely understand what he was saying. I lived about 10 minutes away from Bent Mountain. This is when Red and Minor Terry both lived in trees on their own property for 34 days. Red and Minor, I think, to this day are the only people who have occupied trees on their own property and were charged with trespassing on their own property. There were still people occupying the top of Peter's mountain at the hellbender autonomous zone, we called it. And then there was also the monopod, which was blocking the Forest Road.

The way that the people were treated by federal law enforcement, the Forest Service was really different than the way that they treated Red and Minor. For example, they starved Nutty [in the monopod] at Peter’s mountain. She was never resupplied in her last few weeks. She was living off of pretty much olive oil and rainwater from what I understand. On the other hand, Red and Minor we're getting baloney sandwiches twice a day from the Roanoke City Jail.

Q: Do you think that had something to do with the press coverage? Because there was a fair level of press coverage for Red and Minor Terry as opposed to the Hellbender camp or Yellow Finch, for that matter?

A: I think that that definitely had something to do with it. And I also think it had something to do with the difference between local law enforcement and federal law enforcement.

There was a period of time that summer, the summer of 2018, that I couldn't hear a chainsaw without getting a splitting headache. The trauma that has been inflicted by what I call the Petro-Colonizers on the communities across Appalachia. It's been going on for a very, very long time. But I've been bearing witness now for it long enough to really see not just the short term effects, but some of the long term effects. We have a new term WTT; what we call ‘White Truck Trauma.’ Those of us who've spent a lot of time on the ground…we notice that when there is a white pickup truck without a state license plates, most of the workers come from, Utah, Oklahoma, Texas. And they harass you. They follow you. They are aggressive and there have actually been people who have been injured by going off the road, that sort of thing. Fortunately, I've been followed and scared a few times, but no harm has ever come to me.

Q: Do you think they're actively trying to intimidate?

A: Absolutely. There's ample evidence of this. I mean, you want a really visceral example of intimidation? Look up some stuff about Camp White Pine and what Tiger Swan [a semi-militarized security force] did in Camp White Pine after Standing Rock. Standing Rock became a militarized zone [You can read more details about Tiger Swan’s operation at Standing Rock here and elsewhere]. Now, I haven't had to face tanks, yet. And I wonder if it's because the population along the MVP is predominantly white. I wonder if that's not the reason why there hasn’t been more violence? Regardless, I do what I can every day to take action.

My project at the moment is 1000 flags/1000 waters.

Q: Yes! You have wonderful water flags. I know from my visit that you had them at Bent Mountain as well.

A: I think that the genesis of the idea happened at Bent Mountain. We had started some prayer flags for Red Terry’s tree sit, and when The Washington Post came to Red's [tree sit] we decided to decorate around her tree sit at Bent Mountain. So we hung that up and people just started adding to it. We decided to assist that effort and brought scraps of fabric. Hope Hollingsworth had a whole bunch of fabric because she used to work in a fabric store and we kept Sharpie markers and paints and people would sometimes just hang little mementos or something like cards. Lots of messages to Red. And it was extraordinary, just the organic nature of this expressive form of art.

After that, Kay Ferguson with Artivism Virginia (and with Water is Life, Protect It) connected me with an artist named Jenny Kendler who really wanted to do something to resist these pipelines and in support of the water. She's an ecological artist and lives in Chicago, but she has roots here in Richmond. Her mom lives here. And we were connected through Kay because she was looking for somebody to work with on the ground. So we launched the Virginia Water Flag's project in August of 2018 and sent out between 80 and 100 flags to community groups all over the state.

Q: And they're made of cloth, plastic, what are they made of?

 A: They're made of ripstop nylon. The original ones. At this point, I'm exploring other fabrics. We've also used a lot of repurposed fabric for the smaller flags. And that's, I think, sort of the direction we’ll take. It's fluid like water. The original ones were made from ripstop, which is flag material. They really move well in the wind. People were encouraged to decorate them and to name them according to their community; to write the names of the creeks, write the name of their groups.

Now, we’ve embarked upon the second phase of the project, which we called “The 1000 Flags, 1000 Waters.”  That name is based on two reports put out by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Jenny Kendler, the artist in residence with the NRDC. She wanted to do something with art that reflected the science of this.

Q: So the number a ‘thousand’ is approximately how many streams or creeks the pipelines will ultimately cross?

A: Over eleven hundred streams would be destroyed by the Mountain Valley pipeline. Over fifteen hundred would be destroyed by the Atlantic Coast pipeline. That's a lot of water.

Q: So you wanted to do a flag to represent each one of those bodies of water? Did you write names on each one or how did how did that work?

A: Yes, there's two strands of flags. And one is the MVP and one is the ACP and we often tie them together. So it's a really long strand. They're not actually a thousand flags on those strands because that's a lot of flags. I can honestly say that working with the flags is the most effective thing that I've done in terms of reaching people and educating people about the water and helping to mobilize.

Q: Is it because it's visually communicated; so it's easier to understand immediately what the impact is?

 A: Right, it's also because I always encourage people to make flags and kids participate, too. Kids love it. But I think grown-ups in particular really need to play. You know, you give them a flag and you say, do you have a water body that you love or one that you want to protect? It gives a means of expression and creativity that encourages us to think differently. I found out recently that it takes like three or four hundred repetitions to learn something. But if you are doing it through play, it only takes 20 or 30. While I may be getting the numbers wrong on that, it's pretty close. It's much faster. We take in information more efficiently and it also gives us an opportunity to engage in a sense of ritual.

One of the things that we've done is to baptize the flags in the waters that they're intended to protect. And I've done some of that with communities, and I think people have engaged in that a lot, privately. It's a form of …both grief and celebration.

Crystal Mellow, who spent about three days in the tree at Yellow Finch-- her son made a flag with an Ewok on it. It was the first Star Wars flag. I just love that. That flag delights me in the same way that other flags just break my heart. There was this flag that simply said “I was fracked.”  It came from a young man from West Virginia who is a college student whose property had a fracking pipeline go through it. He had moved nearby to go to college. He had received a lot of bullying from his classmates because he chose to go to college instead of going into industry work, which happens a lot in West Virginia.

Q: Well, I imagine, like Red, their property is getting torn apart.

A: It's traumatizing. It is absolutely traumatizing. Bent Mountain is one of the few places, a little tiny corner of Roanoke County, where they've cut trees, but they haven't cleared most of the trees. Watching them continue to be allowed to do what they have been allowed to do, it falls squarely into the category of abuse, and not just psychological abuse, physical abuse. The harassment of the communities, by some of the workers. I will also say that I feel like some of these workers are as much victims as we are. Considering that they're taking home toxins on their boots to their children, especially around the fracking wells. But more and more, the world is realizing that it is entirely unsustainable and unnecessary.

We have the technology we need to transition to renewables. We’re not, because the money is not there. The subsidies aren't there. So it's like we have to catch up; and we have to catch up now.

And in that respect, I will close by saying that my work right now in organizing and activism. You know, call it what you will: being loud and inconvenient. I’m now working with Extinction Rebellion [XR].  Because after doing this work, and doing this work for over five years, I believe that mass non-violent civil disobedience is the answer.

And there are many other things that feed into that.

I'm not saying that everybody has to get arrested. That is not possible, nor is it wise. But I will say that people showing up in numbers is effective. Mobilization [by XR] has proven to be effective in Europe; and Extinction Rebellion has moved into the United States.

The more people that we can get out, the better. There are a lot of people showing up for a lot of different things now. And that's what it’s going to take. It’s going to take all of us being able to work together and as fluidly as possible.

I work with water, after all.