We feel blessed to live in the Rockfish Valley and within the breathtaking beauty of these Blue Ridge Mountains. We cherish our little 17 acre farm, its gardens, fruit trees and the babbling, clear running Spruce Creek that dissects our property. We hope it may retain its peace and natural prosperity and that our daughter will inherit it pristine and unscarred.

To have Eminent Domain used under the guise of “the public good” and “stronger energy independence” is an unacceptable farce. It wouldn’t hold up to the scrutiny of the framers of our Constitution nor is it acceptable to my wife and I.

Our concerns about the pipeline are numerous. The meadows and woodland on our property, where our 2 year old daughter plays with abandon, are very much in the blast radius should the pipe that runs through 3 of our neighbors properties burst. The large scale construction would disrupt the peace that living in the Nelson County countryside offers to its residents and visitors and the Atlantic Coast Pipeline corridor will leave a large scar on the mountains forever in our view. We are concerned about our ground water. We have wonderfully clean well water as well as several springs on our farm. What will the blasting of the rocky mountainside just above our home do to our water quality? Loss of property value is also a real concern. Can we expect that our property value will ever go up when there is a high pressure 42” fracking pipeline along our border and in clear view from the house? We think not.

Put your pipeline somewhere else Dominion. If you must build it, move it into existing utility rights of way as much as possible and then determine the course of the rest of it by paying what the market will bear and negotiating with landowners who are willing to allow you to run through their property. You don’t get to frack using Eminent Domain so why should you be allowed to claim its necessity for transporting your high profit fracking gas?