FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 20, 2026
CONTACT
Dan Radmacher, Media Specialist, (276) 289-1018, dan@appvoices.org
Yesterday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a permit for the Southeast Supply Enhancement Project, an interstate pipeline proposed by Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Company, LLC. The Corps’ permit, issued under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, authorizes Transco to cut crossings through more than 150 streams and wetlands.
The massive SSEP pipeline expansion is proposed between Pittsylvania County, Virginia, and Coosa County, Alabama. It includes 26.4 miles of new pipe in Pittsylvania County and 28.4 miles of new pipe in Rockingham, Guilford, Forsyth and Davidson counties, North Carolina. Additionally, the proposal calls for expanding emissions-producing gas-fired compressor units in Iredell and Davidson counties, North Carolina, and compressor station updates in Anderson County, South Carolina, Walton and Henry counties in Georgia and Coosa County, Alabama.
Most of the SSEP’s new pipe would be laid near or next to existing Transco pipelines, and parts of the project cover a route similar to the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline Southgate extension. The co-location of multiple high-pressure, large-diameter pipelines is of significant concern for local residents in the impacted counties. Six North Carolina municipal governments have passed resolutions of opposition or concern on this project, including the cities of Greensboro, Lexington and Midway, and Forsyth, Davidson and Guilford counties.
“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers decided to issue a Clean Water Act permit for the Southeast Supply Enhancement Project, but the public has not yet had the opportunity to see the Corps’ full explanation for why they issued it,” said Juhi Modi, North Carolina Program Coordinator for Appalachian Voices. “Unsurprisingly, Transco is rushing ahead and has asked FERC to allow it to start trenching through the region’s fields, forests, and streams. We are disappointed that the Corps appears once more to have fallen short of its duty to protect sensitive waterways and ecosystems from this sort of disruption by issuing the permit.”
“We’ve relied on the protections promised in the historic Clean Water Act of 1972 for more than 50 years, but those protections are under unprecedented attack by the current federal administration,” said David Sligh, Wild Virginia’s Water Quality Program Director. “The Army Corps of Engineers’ action, in rubbler-stamping Transco’s plan to cut and blast through our streams and wetlands, is in line with that approach. The proposed assault on our communities and resources, and the Corps’ approval of it, is deplorable.”
“By approving SSEP, the U.S. Army Corps has placed corporate pipeline profits over the health of our streams and the well-being of impacted communities,” said Caroline Hansley, Campaign Organizing Strategist for the Sierra Club. “Residents, businesses, and elected officials along the route of SSEP have spoken out against this dangerous pipeline. Transco should not be allowed to move forward with construction, damaging our waterways and communities for an unnecessary pipeline.”
“This is another deadly blow to the fish and other aquatic life that call the Dan River home,” said Buck Purgason, North Carolina fisherman. “This unwanted and unnecessary pipeline means more sediment flowing into a river that has been devastated by a coal ash spill just 11 years ago, where only ten percent of the ash was recovered. The continued disregard of public sentiment and science-based facts that say the continued use of fossil fuels will only increase natural disasters makes no sense.”
“SSEP construction will include impacts to wetlands and stream channels,” said Dr. Crystal Cavalier-Keck, Executive Director of 7 Directions of Service. “Given the scale and permanence of authorized wetland conversion, questions remain regarding practicable alternatives analysis, avoidance and minimization measures, mitigation adequacy, and cumulative watershed impacts associated with the authorized activities. Pollution is already high in the communities where Transco proposes to build, and the residents of these areas have voiced opposition to this project again and again. The U.S. Army Corps is accountable to the people and the environment that sustains the people. Enough is enough.”
“There seems to be absolutely no acknowledgement by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in pipeline docket after pipeline docket, that the rains we are seeing routinely will — without question — cause failure of erosion control devices that will result in harm to streams, related aquatic species, and water supplies,” said Shelley Robbins, Senior Decarbonization Manager for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. “It cannot be mitigated. It also does not seem to matter that many of the impacted streams and rivers are near the tops of watersheds. North Carolinians across the state will feel the impacts of an unnecessary pipeline expansion for a foolish gas buildout that extends all the way to Alabama.”
“From the fracking fields of Appalachia to the LNG processing clusters of the Gulf South and everywhere in between, our communities are made less safe by these reckless permit decisions,” said Russell Chisholm, Managing Director of Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights. “For the Corps to endorse unchecked expansion of methane pipelines while the wounds from repeat flooding due to climate chaos are still raw across our region is unconscionable and immoral.”
