News

An article about the Moriah Energy Center, part of a five-part series written by environmental journalist Lisa Sorg, won first-place feature in a competition with entries from the likes of the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

Lisa Sorg, with Inside Climate News, wrote the series “Gaslighting” last year, and entered three of the five articles into the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing’s annual competition. One of the articles featured Neuse Riverkeeper Samantha Krop and her documentation of impacts from the construction of Dominion Energy’s Moriah Energy Center in Person County.

“So, you’re rock stars! I couldn’t have done the story without you allowing me into your lives. Eternally grateful, Lisa,” the journalist wrote in an email to Samantha last week.

Sorg took first place in the Features, small business, category. Judges commented the following on her entry:

“Lisa Sorg’s eye-opening series paints a vivid portrait of a state grappling with an alarmingly rapid expansion of natural gas infrastructure. Drawing upon reporting from six months embedded in communities across North Carolina, Sorg chronicles the environmental and human toll of building ‘a liquified natural gas processing facility, four natural gas plants, multiple compressor stations and a clutter of pipelines’ across the state. 

The first installment sets the dramatic scene via public hearings, kitchen table conversations, and the view from a Cessna plane above the “brown scour of rubble and dirt” in the forest that’s the future site of Dominion’s $400 million Moriah Energy Center. (That installment is illustrated with stunning photos by Julia Wall of The Assembly and informative graphics.) The next story zooms in on the moving story of a family of beekeepers whose farm and livelihood is at risk because of a pipeline expansion, telling their story in words and lovely photos taken by Sorg herself. And the last shows the state’s climate and environmental activist community bracing and preparing for the return of Donald Trump to the White House. 

Overall it’s a powerful package that shows in striking detail not just the power and money stacked in the fossil fuel industry, but also the determination and strategic brilliance of the broad activist movement pushing back against the rapid expansion.” 

Read the article featuring Samantha here: