Student Reporters in West Virginia Find Atlantic Coast Pipeline Offers Only Two Dozen Permanent Jobs

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Itโ€™s hard for anyone to miss a โ€œhelp wantedโ€ sign like this: โ€œ13,000 Union Workers Needed for Atlantic Coast Pipelineย Project.โ€

Thatโ€™s how the website Oilfield Job Shop described the opportunities created by the $7 billion Atlantic Coast pipeline, planned to carry shale gas 605 miles from West Virginia into Virginia and North Carolina. Its builders, a group led by Dominion Energy, say all told, the project will support 17,000 jobs โ€” no small amount of work anywhere, but especially in parts of West Virginia where the economy has long relied on coalย mining.

So, when high school students working with PBS NewsHour’sย Student Reporting Labs in Morgantown, West Virginia, set out to find out what โ€œopportunityโ€ looks like in 2019, they quickly zoomed in on pipelineย jobs.

โ€œOriginally, the assignment was to answer questions about opportunity in West Virginia for young people, but when we looked into the job opportunities and what industries theyโ€™re growing in and what arenโ€™t, really the only industry that really is growing is the natural gas industry,โ€ said Student Reporting Labs reporter and Morgantown High School student Makael Virji, โ€œand so thatโ€™s the one we focusedย on.โ€

The Student Reporting Labs (SRL) program connects high school teachers with local PBS reporters and journalism experts. Over 150 schools nationwide participate in the program, producing video projects that are published online and aired during PBS NewsHour broadcasts or on local PBSย stations.

The students were particularly interested in the kinds of jobs that could let workers stay in or near their hometown, a small city (population: 138,000) on the banks of the Monongahela River in north-central Westย Virginia.

Scrutinizing Pipeline Jobย Numbers

Earlier reporting by a different PBS project revealed that the 17,000 jobs advertised for the Atlantic Coast pipeline didnโ€™t stand up to scrutiny. For one thing, that number is based on an estimate that re-counts the exact same position each year. โ€œIn other words, if someone was hired for a job that lasted for six years, that would count as six cumulative jobs,โ€ Community Idea Stations reported. Itย added that during an average year, the pipeline would directly employ 1,556 workers (and the projections then added in a nearly equal number of spin-off jobs, also multiplied by sixย years).

At no point, in other words, was the pipeline project hiring 13,000 union workers at oneย time.

โ€œIt was trouble finding out how many jobs the pipeline would create,โ€ another SRL reporter, Kyle Shaw, toldย DeSmog.

So, they went to the source, interviewing Dominionโ€™s Brittany Moody, lead engineer for the Atlantic Coastย pipeline.

โ€œIโ€™m thinking in the low 20โ€™s range for permanent employees,โ€ she tells Student Reporting Labs in a roughly six-minute video report produced by theย students.

โ€œSo, when we first went there and we heard that, it was kind of shocking,โ€ Student Reporting Labs reporter Maya Krueger told DeSmog, โ€œbecause we went there specifically to investigate and report on the growth and the opportunity for Westย Virginians.โ€

โ€œWe also followed up and went to the Monongalia Technical Education Center or MTEC and then interviewed people who were welders in training and were about to go into the pipeline industry or work on construction jobs like that,โ€ added Krueger, โ€œand they knew that they were temporary but itโ€™s still kind of almost โ€” still shocking and frustrating that these jobs are not actually helping boost West Virginia as aย whole.โ€

The studentsย interviewed a young worker on the pipeline project who hailed from out-of-state and a welding school student who wanted to stay in West Virginia after graduation. The latterย hoped for a pipeline job that she thought could potentially last two to sevenย years.

For a broader perspective, the high school students turned to an economics professor at West Virginia University inย Morgantown.

โ€œThe long-term effect of these short-term jobs, construction jobs in the natural gas industry, is that we might be encouraging students to not build the skills that they might need for our future workforce,โ€ Professorย Joshua Hall told SRL.

High school students taking video
Student videographers visited a site where pipeline welding was underway. Credit: Student Reportingย Labs

Students who want to stay local face difficult circumstances and not just because pipeline jobs are soย fleeting.

โ€œAnd so, I think that one of the big things, in terms of my students and their future, is that Appalachia will be impacted significantly with climate change,โ€ said Tiphani Davis, a Morgantown High School teacher.ย 

โ€œIn the coming decades, a changing climate is likely to increase flooding, harm ecosystems, increase some health problems, and possibly threaten some recreational activities,โ€ with impacts for the tourism industry, a U.S.ย Environmental Protection Agency fact sheet on how climate change will impact West Virginiaย reports.

Nonetheless, in a city surrounded by counties where coal mining has a history that runs back decades, addressing questions of climate change requires first getting students to look directly at the subject and not just atย rhetoric.

โ€œOne of the specific things about teaching about climate change is that you have to make it really clear that itโ€™s not a political issue, because politicians have made it where if you believe in climate change, youโ€™re a crazy liberal and if you donโ€™t believe in climate change, youโ€™re a horrible conservative,โ€ Davisย added.

โ€œAt literally every single point of our story process, we had to make sure that we wouldnโ€™t change our story because of our personal bias,โ€ SRL reporter Alia King toldย DeSmog.

What Are the Options in Coalย Country?

West Virginia receivedย 93 percent of its electricity from coal in 2017, U.S. Energy Information Administration figures show. Just 4.6 percent of its power came renewable energy sources like wind, hydroelectric, or solarย power.

โ€œThereโ€™s very little solar energy or wind energy or anything in this state,โ€ saidย Virji.

SRL reporter Paxton Marner called attention to the role that coal money played in state politics. โ€œWe have a lot of issues especially with the government investing in renewable energy because a lot of the politicians do accept large donations, their campaigns and whatnot, from big energy,โ€ Marnerย said.

โ€œItโ€™s kind of like a cycle, really, because the people here only know coal,โ€ said Marner. โ€œThatโ€™s like their way of life and theyโ€™re dependent on it and thereโ€™s no way to shift out of it if the people in power donโ€™t do anything aboutย it.โ€

The pressures the high school class described, both economic and ecological, can help explain whatโ€™s propelled the Green New Deal proposal in Congress to gather significant steam since then-Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a coalition of groups including the Sunrise Movement, 350.orgโ€™s Youth vs. Apocalypse, and others shut down entrances to Rep. Nancy Pelosiโ€™s office in December 2018. A Green New Deal resolution introduced by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey has drawn the support of 100 Congresspeople (89 in the House and 11 in the Senate) and the policies it outlines poll strongly among registered voters (as DeSmog previously reported).

Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking to the Sunrise Movement and Green New Deal supporters
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thanks protesters at a Sunrise Movement Green New Deal sit-in on Capitol Hill. Credit:ย Courtesy of theย Sunriseย Movement

The hurdles a Green New Deal faces are profound. (New York Magazine asked in December, โ€œIs a Green New Deal possible without aย revolution?โ€)

But, as the Student Reporting Labs project shows, so too are the economic and environmental challenges facing young people in West Virginia andย beyond.

For now, the Atlantic Coast pipeline has run into serious difficulties of its own. A federal court tossed a permit that would have allowed the pipeline to cross through the George Washington and Monongahela National Forests in a lawsuit brought by the Southern Environmental Law Center, with a Fourth Circuit panel finding on appeal that the Forest Service had โ€œabdicated its responsibility to preserve national forest resourcesโ€ when that permit wasย approved.

Dominion Energy told ABC News on Tuesday that it plans to appeal that decision up to the United States Supremeย Court.

Main image: PBS Student Reporting Labs studentsย in Morgantown, West Virginia. Credit: Student Reportingย Labs

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Sharon Kelly is an attorney and investigative reporter based in Pennsylvania. She was previously a senior correspondent at The Capitol Forum and, prior to that, she reported for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Earth Island Journal, and a variety of other print and online publications.

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