Union Hill Baptist Church’s Pastor Paul M. Wilson. The Pastor is organizing, along with Friends of Buckingham (County, VA), against the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and a 55,000 horsepower compressor station planned by Dominion Energy in the Union Hill community. There are freedmen cemeteries and unmarked slave burials on or near the site where Dominion wants to build its compressor station. If completed the pipeline’s purpose (on the books) is to deliver gas to markets in VA and NC with some discussion of expansion into SC.                             

Photo: Orin Langelle/photolangelle.org

This week’s Earth Watch guest was Pastor Paul, who leads the Union Hill and Union Grove Baptist churches in the Union Hill, Va. community. Union Grove Baptist is fighting to stop the Atlantic Coast fracked gas pipeline and a compressor station planned by Dominion Energy.

Union Hill is a historic Black community founded by descendants of freed slaves in unincorporated Buckingham County near the Cumberland State Forest, west of Richmond. Local residents see the pipeline company’s disregard for their community as part of an established history of environmental racism in Virginia.

Global Justice Ecology Project’s Orin Langelle recently photographed Pastor Paul for an upcoming photo essay. Langelle shares a report back at PhotoLangelle.org.

Earth Watch is a regular segment on The Sojourner Truth Radio Show, which airs every week on KPFK-FM in Los Angeles and around the world online.