Mountains of plastic, rivers of radioactive waste and billions of Chinese dollars: Inside Trump's plan to save Appalachia by alexnazaryan
ST. CLAIRSVILLE, Ohio — One thing you learn traveling through the Upper Midwest is that the various components of the oil and gas industries — the pipelines, the storage wells — often have gorgeously evocative names: Mountain Valley, Falcon, Plains, Atlantic Sunrise. These names are a kind of beautification project, like trees planted to obscure a municipal dump. A plant in Pennsboro, W.Va., called Clearwater treats fracking wastewater, which can remain radioactive even after treatment.
“That wall isn’t going to stop s***,” says Bev Reed, activist from the Concerned Ohio River Residents. Another activist, Ted Auch of the FracTracker Alliance, sent a drone whizzing into the air. Many cottage industries have thrived in Appalachia since fracking took hold here about a decade ago. One of them is prostitution. Another is the mapping of fracking infrastructure onto the landscape, which is typically done with drones because the enormity of the infrastructure is hard to otherwise grasp.
Another concern for critics of the plan is that it represents an investment in fossil fuels at a time when climate science says the country should be divesting from them. “The climate crisis is getting untenable,” says Varshini Prakash, a founder of the Sunrise Movement, a climate change advocacy group, and architect of the Green New Deal, an ambitious plan sponsored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
Trump recently boosted the project’s prospects with an executive order on “promoting energy infrastructure,” which he signed on April 10. The order gave the Department of Energy six months to produce a report “describing opportunities, through the Federal Government or otherwise, to promote economic growth of the Appalachian region, including growth of petrochemical and other industries.”
ASH will turn the Ohio River Valley into the epicenter of the American petrochemical industry, whose operations are closely tied to the well-established but still-expanding fracking sector. This is what Trump promised when he promised to save Appalachia, even if there are some in Appalachia who do not want to be saved, at least not on what will amount to an immense raft of cheap plastic.
ASH appears to have had its origins in 2015, not long before the Army Corps of Engineers division in Omaha, Neb., announced details of a plan to install a pipeline across the Missouri River in North Dakota, on the edge of the Sioux reservation of Standing Rock. That pipeline, Dakota Access, became the target of a prolonged protest that attracted international attention.
Nobody seemed to be working harder to make that happen than Brian J. Anderson, former director of the Energy Institute at West Virginia University and an endowed professor in plastics manufacturing. The latter position is funded by General Electric. According to reporting by Steve Horn of the DeSmog blog, an environmental news site, Anderson had also once worked for the Appalachian Development Group, the very same concern that now stands to potentially receive the $1.
The seemingly impressive employment number comes from IMPLAN, an algorithmic tool that allows users to calculate the economic impact of a potential project. IMPLAN models are often deployed by supporters of new sports arenas and other developments that need to be sold to a potentially skeptical taxpaying public. The promise of jobs always does the trick.
In other words, IMPLAN is inherently sunny, which is why it is beloved by developers. It always give them the answer they want. Of course, to claim 100,000 jobs is immensely tantalizing. And if the figure isn’t credible, it at least has the veneer of credibility, which in the age of “alternative facts” is more than enough. The claim is also politically expedient. The president is widely beloved in West Virginia, but he will need to win the more difficult states of Ohio and Pennsylvania in 2020 to remain in the White House for four more years. ASH has proven a potent means of steering money to those states.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., meanwhile, has moved to stop that loan, which has not been definitely approved. Her amendment recently passed the House, but is unlikely to pass in a GOP-controlled Senate. Still, the sense that things are taking too long remains. At a Senate hearing in July, Manchin of West Virginia said that ASH could augur a “renaissance in the chemical industry” — if only it were ever built. He asked one of the witnesses, a Department of Energy official, for “any type of an update.” He looked and sounded anxious.
Approaching New Orleans, vast contraptions of steel rise on either side of the road. Chimneys spew smoke; trucks raise dust. There is evidence of immense activity, but few people visible. Small towns sit squeezed between the plants: Willow Glen, White Castle. These are so-called fenceline communities, which like their counterparts in West Virginia directly experience the pollution wealthier people have the privilege of avoiding.
“Their quality of life has never been higher,” Menezes said of Louisiana. The state ranks No. 42 in quality of life, at least according to one survey. That’s not exactly spectacular, but Pennsylvania and West Virginia are both even lower. Menezes would like to change that. “It just makes perfect sense to develop it there,” he says of ASH.
Cancer Valley is what activists have already begun calling the Ohio River Valley, where, ironically enough, American winemaking got its start in the early 19th century. There are still a few wineries in the hills above the river, but they are far outnumbered by fracking pads. Even without the full Appalachian Storage Hub, oil and gas have taken over the landscape. Pipelines look like enormous pythons as they run up and down the hills that have been stripped of vegetation.
But there is some evidence that Appalachia could prove unsuitable for a project of this scope and size. It is relatively easy to lay pipeline across the flatlands of Texas and Oklahoma, much harder to do so across the hills and valleys of Appalachia, where the ground is less stable. That instability combined with the combustibility of what flows through those pipes can be a dangerous combination.
It is not clear that storing natural gas liquids under the Ohio River is a good idea, either. The Ohio is already known as the nation’s dirtiest river, even as it provides drinking water to some 5 million people in the area, including to the residents of Cincinnati. The natural gas liquids would be stored in salt caverns along the river’s banks. The method, which is not new, is not quite as foolproof as supporters claim. Seven years ago, a salt cavern collapsed in Bayou Corne, La.
And then there’s the plastics industry. Supporters of ASH and its associated project talk about petrochemicals, generally downplaying that the end product of their efforts will be more plastic, whose use is facing increasing opposition. According to Carroll Muffett of the Center for International Environmental Law, plastics will account for 56 gigatons of carbon emissions in the next 30 years. “The plastics crisis is a climate crisis hiding in plain sight,” he recently told NPR.
“I grew up with a family of coal miners,” White said. “Most of the men in my direct family line have, at some point, worked in the industry.” He estimates that that has been the case for the last five or six generations. And it was a tradition that ended with him. White had posted about the meeting on Facebook and hoped for a strong showing from activists. But when they showed up in the New Martinsville municipal chambers where the meeting was to be held, the room was virtually empty. A handful of public officials sat facing rows of unoccupied chairs. A projector was propped up on a board game.
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