Lindsay Gilpin was hanging around her house this weekend when she got news that shocked her.

I think I was outside or something, and I got back to my phone, and there were like 15 text messages and like a bunch of tweets, and opened it up and my jaw dropped for sure.

This news was about a story Lindsay's been reporting on for years for her own website, Southerly,

and others. It's a story about an underground highway of natural gas being built across 600 miles

of the American South.

It's called the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

Lindsay has been watching as activists pressed to limit the pipeline's scope.

She'd seen them at city council meetings, kept track of lawsuits they filed.

Do you know offhand how many?

I guess if you include the eminent domain lawsuits, there have been, you know, dozens.

The activists were worried about the environmental impact of the pipeline. Their strategy was to block every attempt to get the thing built. They argued to keep the energy companies from

laying pipe underneath the Appalachian Trail. They argued to keep the energy companies from laying pipe

underneath the Appalachian Trail. They argued construction put endangered species at risk.

Most specifically, this tiny little bumblebee called the rusty patch bumblebee.

And all these lawsuits, all this work, it slowed the pipeline down. But what no one was expecting was what happened this weekend,

which is that after six years of legal fights, the companies behind this pipeline, Duke Energy,

and Dominion Energy, announced the whole thing was canceled.

I think everyone was surprised that it was canceled.

Like, it was a holiday weekend.

I don't think anyone had been expecting that.

I wanted to talk to Lindsay because her reporting has been focused on the people in the path of the pipeline,

the people who helped take the energy companies to court, and the people who simply felt ambivalent about the pipeline's progress.

...