The Progressive Pulse: “This is the first academic paper to analyze the potential health and environmental problems associated with what is known as “midstream” infrastructure — the transmission and gathering lines for natural gas.
“These results have implications for environmental justice,” the authors wrote, including burdens for Indigenous peoples. “… By considering the environmental justice implications of an entire pipeline network, decision-makers, researchers and others can gain a fuller understanding of the societal impacts of oil and gas flowing through the network.”
In North Carolina, the now-cancelled Atlantic Coast Pipeline would have crossed through tribal lands, including those of the Haliwa-Saponi and the Lumbee. Some Indigenous people oppose pipeline projects because of potential harm to ancestral territories that have cultural, historical or religious significance….
However, the correlations do confirm that pipeline networks are not randomly distributed, the paper states. “Regardless of responsibility or intent, the disproportionately high density of natural gas pipelines in areas of high social vulnerability warrants further attention.”
The researchers note that federal environmental justice analyses are “frequently criticized as methodologically unsound, procedurally rote or ineffective at preventing or minimizing negative impacts disproportionately imposed on socially vulnerable populations.””