Early on the morning of April 11, Mary Beth Coffey came home to the sound of chainsaws and large pine trees crashing to the ground.
Mary Beth Coffey, her sons and family friends say goodbye to an oak tree on her property Wednesday. The tree is on the route of the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
HEATHER ROUSSEAU | The Roanoke Times
Coffey knew, as soon as she read an urgent text from a neighbor and left work in a rush, that it was the day she had been dreading — the day that tree-cutting for the Mountain Valley Pipeline would invade her family farm on Bent Mountain.
For three years, Coffey had fought the natural gas pipeline. She spoke against it at a public hearing. She marched against it at a rally on Capitol Square in Richmond. She argued against it when Mountain Valley took her to federal court, where the company obtained an easement through her property by eminent domain.
