ACP Lessons Learned
A collection of videos produced by Woody Greenberg and Ron Enders document Friends of Nelson’s six-year fight against Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the lessons learned from that struggle.
These videos cover five general topics that may be viewed as a complete series (one hour and five minutes) or as individual segments:
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Organizing the community against the proposed pipeline. (12 min 13 sec)
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Legal strategies that succeeded in stopping the project. (15 min 38 sec)
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Political strategies on the federal, state, and local levels. (10 min 38 sec)
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Knowing the historical and other resources in your community. (9 min 58 sec)
There is also a link to all of the 19 interview sessions that covered the above topics. These are in-depth discussions of the topics for viewers interested in more details. They have been lightly edited for brevity and elimination of non-germane subjects. In addition to these videos A Pipeline Fighters Guide was produced by Ron Enders and is available for free download, (click Here)
Library of Virginia complete resources
Believing the story of resistance to be a vital resource for future pipeline fighters and community organizers, Ellen Bouton devoted countless hours after the Atlantic Coast Pipeline battle to preserve its history. She gathered Friends of Nelson’s records, along with materials from other individuals and organizations across western and central Virginia, carefully organized them, and deposited the full archive with the Library of Virginia—ensuring that the hard-won lessons of this fight will continue to inspire and guide those who stand up for their land and their communities. The collection, Record of the Western and Central Virginia Resistance to the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, 2014-2021, is publicly available from the Library of Virginia. Click here to bring you to this comprehensive resource.
Property Rights and Pipeline Center
Jill Averitt dedicated six years of her life into the fight against the Atlantic Coast Pipeline as a passionate volunteer with Friends of Nelson. When the pipeline was defeated, she spent another year channeling that same fire into creating a manual and a series of videos for the Property Rights and Pipeline Center—tools to educate, inspire, and empower anyone facing the injustice of having their land threatened by a gas pipeline. Her work stands as a testament to what determined citizens can do when they refuse to back down.
Book About the ACP Flight
Gaslight: The Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Fight for America’s Energy Future
Winner of the 2025 Phillip D. Reed Environmental Writing Book Award
Jonathon Mingle (Island Press, 2024)
Available from: Island Press / Bookshop.org / Amazon / Barnes and Noble
Imagine one day you receive a letter in the mail that informs you that a large energy company is planning to build a massive pipeline through your property. That surveyors will be coming out soon. That they have the legal right to do so, whether you like it or not, because this project is in the "public interest"--because the pipeline will be carrying natural gas, the so-called "bridge fuel" that politicians on both sides of the aisle have been peddling for decades as the path to a clean, green energy future.
This was the gist of the letter that Dominion Energy sent to thousands of residents living along the path of its proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline in 2014, setting off an epic, six-year battle that eventually led all the way to the Supreme Court. That struggle's epicenter was in the mountains of Virginia, where communities stretching from the Blue Ridge foothills to the Shenandoah Valley and the Allegheny highlands became Dominion's staunchest foes. On one side was an archetypal Goliath: a power company that commands billions of dollars, the votes of politicians, and the decisions of the federal government. On the other, an army of Davids: lawyers and farmers, conservationists and conservatives, scientists and nurses, innkeepers and lobbyists, families who farmed their land since before the Revolutionary War and those who were not allowed to until after the Civil War.
At stake was not only the future of the communities that lay in the pipeline's path but the future of American energy. Would the public be swayed by the industry's decades-long public relations campaign to frame natural gas - a fossil fuel and itself a potent greenhouse gas - as a "solution" to climate change? Or would we recognize it as a methane bomb, capable of not only imperiling local property and upending people's lives, but of pushing the planet further down the road towards climate chaos?
Vivid and suspenseful, gut-wrenching and insightful, Gaslight is more than the chronicle of a turning point in American history. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the dark, overlooked story of America's "favorite fossil fuel," and the immense future stakes of the energy choices we face today.