Approval Of Compressor Station In Crestwood Stirs Residents

By Dr. George F. Reed
Special to the New Journal and Guide

Several years ago, the blockbuster film Erin Brockovich dramatized a true story where a compressor station, operated by a power company, released pollution into a community. The compressor station featured in the movie caused widespread cancer and generated liability north of $300 million dollars.

Now, Virginia Natural Gas wants to build a compressor station in Crestwood, a Black community in Chesapeake.  No one living in Crestwood wants the compressor station. Why?  Compressor stations push gas through pipelines.  However, on July 15, six members of the Chesapeake City Council decided that Crestwood is getting a compressor station, whether the community wants it or not.

Virginia Natural Gas already operates its Gridley Gate Metering and Regulation Station in Crestwood.  The gas company wants to expand its operation at Gridley by building the compressor station there.

The gas transmission lines that pass through Gridley operate at very high pressure (1,250 psi).  Throughout the nation, 243 pipeline explosions were reported to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration in the years 2015 to 2023.

Serious incidents at these high-pressure transmission pipelines account for, on average, two fatalities, nine injuries and $65 million in property damage each year.  In September 2024, a natural gas pipeline exploded in Deer Park, Texas, resulting in evacuations and shelter-in-place orders for nearby residents.  Homes and power lines were damaged.  This is the reason why the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration urges caution when high pressure transmission pipelines are laid in developed areas where people are living.

Crestwood got its start during World War II.  It provided housing for Black employees of the Smith Douglas Fertilizing Plant.  Crestwood today is a vibrant, mainly Black, community with neighborhoods of well-kept single-family homes such as Eva Garden, Crestwood Manor, Crestwood at Parkside and Portlock.

It is also home to a few mobile home communities and strip malls.  The median annual household income in Crestwood is $72,000, which is about 24% lower than the median household income for the City of Chesapeake as a whole.  Crestwood, then, is a Black community that is working hard to earn its way into the American middle class.

Crestwood is also the type of place where American industry likes to put its polluting or dangerous industrial operations, as the gas company did in 2018 when it ran its high-pressure transmission line adjacent to a school and through residents’ back yards in another Black neighborhood in Chesapeake (Georgetown).

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The existing Gridley Station, with its nest of high pressure transmission pipelines, is located one-quarter mile from a mobile home community with 288 sites in Crestwood (Sturbridge Village), one quarter mile from CFC Childcare in Crestwood, less than one-half mile from the Eva Garden neighborhood in Crestwood, and three-quarters of a mile from the 553 middle school students at Crestwood Middle School.

The July 15 City Council hearing was a battle between the “little guy” and the “big corporation.”  Fifty-one people registered in advance of the hearing to speak against the project.  Each was a Crestwood resident or represented a Crestwood community organization.    

The battle was fought, though, on an unlevel playing field because City Council opened the meeting by changing its rules to deny about 80% of the opposition speakers from speaking at the hearing.

Twenty-two people registered to speak in support of the project.  All but one was a representative of the gas company or some other pro-business entity.  The City Council allowed about one-half of the supportive speakers to speak.  Had the City Council permitted all of those opposing the project to speak, as it had done only a few weeks before when it sat for hours and hours while large numbers of residents from a white neighborhood spoke in opposition to a data station, it would have heard that the compressor station project provides no benefit whatsoever to the gas company’s customers in Chesapeake. Also, this project is being pushed at the urging of a $21 billion corporation located at the end of a gas transmission line that feeds the town of West Point, Virginia.

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If the City Council on July 15 had decided to hear from everyone, as it did for those opposing the data center, then perhaps it would have refused permission for the compressor station project in the Black neighborhood, in the same way that it refused permission for the data center in the white neighborhood.

Several months ago, in February 2025, the gas company arranged for its high-powered law firm to file a 184-page document at the Virginia State Corporation Commission.  The purpose of the filing was to justify and win approval for the compressor station project.  It states in several places in that document that this project benefits Smurfit Westrock, in West Point, Virginia, 82 miles away from Chesapeake.

The gas company tells us also in that document that the project benefits the northern portion of the gas company’s distribution system.  By this, the gas company means Fredericksburg, Quantico, and Fairfax County.  Chesapeake is in the southern portion of the gas company’s distribution system.

It is curious that the gas company tried to change its story at the July 15 hearing.  At the hearing, the gas company said nothing about Smurfit, offering instead something found nowhere in its exhaustive 184-page SCC filing…namely that the compressor station was needed to ensure reliable delivery to Chesapeake customers on very cold days, when demand is very high.

No one from the Crestwood community, nor any gas company customer from anywhere in the City, provided any testimony at the July 15 hearing that they had experienced unreliable gas company service to heat their home or business when cold weather arrived in Chesapeake.  The only gas company customer claiming unreliable service was Smurfit Westrock in West Point.

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Smurfit Westrock is a massive, well-funded, sophisticated corporation, with a team of well-heeled attorneys.  The corporation’s website tells us that it operates in 40 countries, it has 500 packaging converting operations, and it operates 59 paper mills.

This means that the regular folks of Chesapeake who are living in Crestwood are up against a corporation whose 2024 annual revenue was $21.1 billion dollars.

This corporation is pushing Chesapeake to accept the risk and the burdens of hosting the compressor station, for the benefit of Smurfit Westrock’s paper mill in West Point, even though Chesapeake gets no benefit whatsoever from the project.

Smurfit Westrock is also politically well connected.  The Smurfit Westrock Political Action Committee, or PAC, raises money to elect or defeat candidates.  FEC filings confirm as of May 31 of this year Smurfit Westrock PAC is sitting on $165,000 cash on hand.  Smurfit Westrock spends more than $200,000 each year lobbying elected officials.

The Chesapeake City Council at the July 15 hearing sided on a 6-3 vote with the $21 billion dollar politically connected corporation, that wants the people of Chesapeake to accept the risk and the burdens of hosting the compressor station, for the benefit of Smurfit Westrock’s paper mill in West Point, even though Chesapeake gets no benefit whatsoever from the project.

The three City Council members who voted (in a losing cause) to protect the people of Crestwood are long-time Council Member Dr. Ella Ward, and recently elected Council Members Dr. Pat King and Les Smith.  They are to be commended.

The six who voted to slap down the residents of Crestwood, in favor of big corporate interests, are Mayor Rick West, Vice Mayor John de Triquet, and Council Members Amanda Newins, Daniel Whitaker, Jeff Bunn and Debbie Ritter.

The seats held by de Triquet, Newins, Whitaker and Bunn are on the ballot in November 2026.  Of course, 2026 is an election held in a non-Presidential year.  You can reliably bet that the people living in Crestwood will not be skipping the 2026 election.  If they did not know before, they certainly appreciate now the importance of using their vote to get people of their choice to represent them on the Chesapeake City Council.

George F. Reed, Ph.D., is Chairman, New Chesapeake Men for Progress, Inc.

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