People vs. Pipelines

Perspective from a farm in East Tennessee

By Holley Evergreen Roberts

Patricia Smarsh of Wartburg, Tennessee, recalls growing up on a 100-acre farm that grew tobacco, corn and hay, and included a herd of cattle, pigs and chickens. 

“That childhood that I was raised in made me who I am today, even though I tried to bypass it out of college and go to the big cities,” she says. “But now there’s no place like having the trees, fields and creeks.”

Smarsh and her husband, Jeffrey Gilliam, now own their own 6-acre plot of land in the area, but it’s threatened by the Ridgeline Pipeline, a proposed methane gas project from Enbridge Inc. 

“When the Enbridge rep came to the door wanting signatures for a survey, that’s how we found out,” Smarsh says.

The Enbridge representative informed them about a small easement from 1949, back when land deeds were handwritten. Prior easements like these can give pipeline companies broad leeway to add new infrastructure, and these provisions are not always clear to landowners.

“We did not know it was going to be such a big pipe and that it was going to be methane,” she says.

The couple is deeply concerned about the impacts the pipeline could have on their well water and the diverse flora and fauna around them, among other threats the pipeline poses. One of Smarsh’s many concerns is the family’s trees.

“We’ve got a couple of 70- to 80-year-old crepe myrtles out here along the driveway, and they’re just beautiful,” she says. 

When the Enbridge representative asked multiple times why she couldn’t just do away with them and plant new ones afterward, Smarsh said she told them emphatically, “because we’ll never see a tree like that again in my lifetime!”

Gilliam adds, “Yeah, they act like our trees and our property ain’t nothing, you know? There’s resources on the Earth to provide everything we need without having to destroy the Earth and ourselves for it,” he says, “but they can’t make money off of it.”

Smarsh described Enbridge’s process of dealing with landowners as wearing people down until they give in to the company out of exhaustion.

The Tennessee Valley Authority is behind Enbridge’s pipeline because TVA wants to use the gas for a new power plant at its Kingston site. The couple would rather see “alternative types of truly more environmentally friendly options.”

Their advice for people facing similar offers from companies like Enbridge is: “If you don’t understand [their offer], ask questions. Don’t rush in. If you can’t get your questions answered, ask for help.”

They implore the decision-makers at TVA and Enbridge to practice “open heartedness and good communication, and take a minute to stand in others’ shoes … and think about the generations to come.”

Smarsh adds, “[The] Lord made this planet for us to live on, you know, and it’s alive itself. So, I mean, if we continue down this path, you’re not only killing the planet, but you’re killing us, too.”