A Pipeline Company Says It Will Protect the Environment in North Carolina. Its Record in Tennessee Says Otherwise.

PITTSBORO, N.C.— An 85-year-old widow stood before a panel of Enbridge Gas representatives perched above her on a stage at the Chatham County Agriculture & Conference Center. She had fire in her eyes.

“I’m usually a courteous person but you bring out the worst in me,” she said. “I’m going to fight you to the death.”

In mid-June she and hundreds of Chatham County residents attended two community meetings, hosted by Enbridge, to voice their opposition to a proposed 28-mile natural gas pipeline that would stretch from Siler City to Moncure in southern Chatham County. 

Construction could begin as soon as fall 2027, with a service date of spring 2028. 

Enbridge has not announced the final route, but as company surveyors begin canvassing private properties along the general corridor, residents are analyzing maps that show the pipeline could not only rob them of land through eminent domain, but also cut through forests, wetlands, streams, rivers and a historic Black cemetery.

Company documents maintain that Enbridge has a “proven safety track record” and is “committed to being a good steward of natural resources, selecting a route that reduces potential impacts on the environment and following all permit specifications.” But federal records show Chatham residents’ concerns about Enbridge’s environmental performance are valid. Over the past seven months, an Enbridge subsidiary has amassed a dozen non-compliance events related to its Ridgeline Expansion Project in central Tennessee, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

Enbridge’s East Tennessee Natural Gas is building the 122-mile Ridgeline project to supply natural gas to the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Gas plant, scheduled to open late next year. 

Kingston, which is west of Knoxville and 115 miles west of the Tennessee-North Carolina line, currently burns coal. It’s the same plant where, in 2008, a containment wall breached and dumped 1 billion gallons of coal ash sludge into the Clinch and Emory rivers.

During the pipeline construction, East Tennessee Natural Gas contractors damaged wetlands and streams after driving heavy equipment across stream beds and outside a “designated travel lane,” FERC found.

They encroached on private property. Contractors spilled more than 3,000 gallons of drilling mud, known as an “inadvertent return,” while boring beneath waterways, FERC records show.

Erosion controls repeatedly failed after heavy rains, sending dirt into wetlands and the Little Emory River. In another instance, contractors pushed heavily sediment-laden water from a large puddle over the erosion controls and into the stream, according to FERC records. 

East Tennessee Natural Gas told FERC it has corrected the violations and, in some cases, required contractors to undergo additional training, according to federal documents. 

The Southern Environmental Law Center asked FERC on May 13 to suspend work on the entire project. “Impacts already documented can have long-lasting adverse effects on the local environment,” SELC said.

FERC did not respond to the letter, an SELC spokesperson said.

Yet a week after the SELC’s letter, East Tennessee Natural Gas incurred its most serious known violation since construction began. 

On May 20, federally designated biologists arrived at a site along the Emory River to conduct mussel surveys and to relocate endangered and threatened species before East Tennessee Natural Gas built an equipment bridge.

But East Tennessee Natural Gas contractors had already built the bridge, according to a letter from FERC to the company. By installing bridge supports in the river, the contractors jeopardized endangered species habitat in that segment of the project and violated a legal agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, FERC said.

On May 29, FERC’s compliance monitor issued a stop-work order for the project. The commission also required East Tennessee Natural Gas to provide extensive documentation about the decision to prematurely build the bridge.

The company attributed the violation to “a communication and interpretation gap on the requirements,” according to company correspondence with FERC dated June 18. Since then, East Tennessee Natural Gas has retrained workers, installed additional signage and fencing and implemented a communication plan.

The stop-work order is still in effect, but only at that one location while Enbridge complies with federal requirements, said Enbridge spokesperson Michael Barnes. 

The Emory River incident is the second time East Tennessee Natural Gas has violated its federal agreements. The company acknowledged to FERC in June that in a review of other sensitive areas, it found a “similar situation occurred at Hurricane Creek” in February. 

East Tennessee Natural Gas is investigating the incident, the letter said.

As for the less-serious incidents, “East Tennessee Natural Gas is cooperating with the applicable state and federal officials,” Barnes wrote in an email to Inside Climate News. “We have taken appropriate actions to avoid further impact. Internally, we are reviewing our processes to reinforce the protocols at these and any sensitive resource areas.” 

He added, “We remain committed to protecting both people and the environment during the construction of this important energy project.”

The Chatham County corridor in North Carolina includes the Rocky River Subbasin, where, like the sensitive habitats along the Tennessee pipeline route, many endangered, threatened and other species of concern live.

“It’s considered a globally significant aquatic diversity hotspot,” wrote John Alderman, a retired endangered species and conservation biologist, in a letter to Democratic Gov. Josh Stein., There are 200 sites in the subbasin where many endangered, threatened and other species have been found, according to state wildlife data.

The pipeline corridor runs through rugged terrain, where the construction would be more complex. Many residents noted at the Agriculture & Conference Center meeting that Enbridge’s proposed corridor circumvents land owned by Tim Sweeney, the billionaire founder and CEO of Epic Games, which developed Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular video games. 

Sweeney is a land conservationist who has donated tens of thousands of acres in North Carolina to nonprofits and the Fish and Wildlife Service to protect sensitive habitats. 

He owns more than 270 parcels in Chatham County, which he’s placed into conservation.

When a utility company tried to run high-voltage power lines through the Box Creek Wilderness Area in the North Carolina mountains, Sweeney bought the property for $15 million, won a court case and donated the conservation easement to the Fish and Wildlife Service to prevent the new line from going through.

But Sweeney isn’t trying to dodge the Enbridge pipeline, according to his attorney. 

He and his attorney have been advocating “for a route that minimizes new disturbance by following existing utility easements wherever possible.”

“I’m happy to provide easements through my [Chatham County] land following the large power transmission corridor that goes through my conservation land for several miles,” Sweeney told Inside Climate News in an email, “which seems like an ideal route for many reasons.”

Enbridge spokesperson Persida Montanez told Inside Climate News that when practical, the company considers routing new pipelines alongside existing rights-of-way to minimize environmental impacts. 

However, that’s not feasible for the Chatham County project, Montanez wrote in an email. 

First, Enbridge doesn’t have its own existing right-of-way in the area that could be used for the project, she said.

And second, “Following the existing electric transmission easement in its entirety would have impacted more landowners and disturbed additional environmentally sensitive areas not otherwise presently affected,” Montanez wrote in the email. 

Alderman, who has mapped the potentially affected properties—including his own—said some landowners with existing transmission easements could lose as much as 40 percent of their land if Enbridge builds alongside those rights-of-way.

“For people who have only a few acres, the power line easement is a true burden,” Alderman said.