I thought The Virginia Way was a super interesting article to read. It starts out telling the story of Theresa “Red” Terry, a 61-year-old grandmother, who stayed perched on a platform in a tree for 35 days to protest the Mountain Valley Pipeline going through her property. This shocked me because before this I did not know that companies could just build things through people’s private property. Her family’s farm had been in her family since before the Revolutionary War, and trees that were centuries old were being cut down for this pipeline. She and her daughter were nearly arrested for trespassing on their own property, and for a while Terry was denied food and water while she was protesting. Terry’s protest gained national media attention and brought to attention the corruption of Dominion, a government electric company held within a private natural gas corporation. The article mentioned that Dominion is essentially a monopoly and controls two-thirds of the power in Virginia, which I found really crazy. Dominion was also allowed to use their money to buy political influence, which only added to their power. Because of their financial investments and the power that Dominion held, at first there were very few politicians who would speak out against them. However, their price hikes and disregard for environmental regulations started to draw criticism from more and more people and politicians, led by Josh Stanfield. In 2018, the House of Delegates stood up to Dominion’s greed and voted against the bill to raise their electricity rates even further, which was unusual because Dominion had always gotten everything they wanted. In addition to this, politicians who supported Dominion have started being voted out of office. Dominion still holds a lot of power in Virginia though, so this is an ongoing debate. I found it interesting to see the different reasons that both Democrats and Republicans have for opposing Dominion.
Virginia Issues and Controversies