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Nate and Jane Palmer’s farm sits in a clay plain basin adjacent to one of the many wetlands in Monkton, a rural Vermont community known for, among other things, its annual salamander migrations and amphibian road crossings. In addition to raising animals and growing crops for small-scale biofuel experiments, the couple runs Palmer’s Garage, a repair shop and community fixture in nearby North Ferrisburgh.

Jane Palmer recalls the controversy when Vermont Gas first announced its intention to construct a gas pipeline down the western side of the state, a route which would require a right-of-way through the center of Monkton. “We thought it was a dumb idea that would undermine alternative energy efforts,” she says.

But it wasn’t until a neighbor stopped by in late January 2013 with maps showing the pipeline running through their fields and 150 feet from their house that the Palmers began to really pay attention. Shortly thereafter, an agent from the gas company called the house, seeking permission to survey their land for the pipeline. The Palmers refused, stating they had no intention of allowing a gas pipeline to be built across their land. Nate notes that, “we essentially flipped them the bird from the beginning.”

With their gesture, the Palmers joined a growing list of landowners and community members opposed to the largest expansion of Vermont’s fossil fuel infrastructure in decades. If built, the proposed Addison-Rutland Natural Gas Project would extend Vermont’s gas pipeline grid south into Addison and Rutland counties, with the possibility of further expansions linking up with the US pipeline network in the Albany, New York area.

Community opposition builds

Vermont Gas Systems, a Canadian-owned company with a corporate structure topped by pipeline giant Enbridge and a $186 billion pension fund, first floated the idea of a gas pipeline from Burlington to Rutland back in 2011. But the project rapidly accelerated in the fall of 2012, after the company struck a deal with International Paper (IP) to horizontally drill a pipeline spur under the nation’s 6th largest inland water body, Lake Champlain, to IP’s aging paper mill in Ticonderoga, NY. Seventy percent of the gas in the pipe would be destined for the paper-mill, with corporate customers on the Vermont side making up for much of the remaining demand.

Vermont Gas quickly found itself raising the ire of landowners in Monkton after surveyors were spotted on a number of properties without permission. Monkton residents, wise from a fight in the early 2000’s against a power-line project, canvassed door-to-door and collected Notices Against Trespass, which they delivered to the gas company en masse as a warning and tactic to slow the project.

But the opposition wasn’t limited to Monkton. In nearby Hinesburg, residents like Mark Ames confronted Vermont Gas at an informational session, stating, “I’m not interested in having a gas line either through my house, 20 feet in front of my house, behind my house, or through my fields.”

A grassroots network of affected community members and local climate activists formed to oppose the pipeline, canvassing across multiple towns before the first public hearing in Hinesburg. Following a colorful rally outside the hearing, dozens of pipeline opponents walked into the crowded auditorium together, singing a reinterpretation of the union classic, “solidarity forever, for the unity keeps us strong.”

A few weeks later, when Vermont Gas attempted to unveil its five route options for the Lake Champlain phase of the pipeline, community members from Middlebury interrupted the meeting to great applause, calling for a sixth option: No pipeline, period. As they left the room following the meeting, a group of neighbors were overheard remarking, “that was a bloodbath.”