The protest pulled in speakers to the second floor the Floyd Country Store Thursday at noon, along with enough media to help fill the room.

The speakers said corporate desires should not replace private property rights and urged citizens and governments to stop planned pipelines in Southwestern Virginia.

Mark Clemmons, a Floyd Countian now living in Henry County, declared himself an environmentalist who will “go anywhere people are fighting for the environment.”

Preserve Franklin County founder Mark Laity-Snyder, said the threat has eased, for now, for some but pointed to others and said “but what about you?”

Jenny Chapman of Preserve Bent Mountain said corporations should not have the power to disrupt local lives and override the wishes of local residents.

She called such actions “unconscionable.”

The “current” proposed route is now proposed to travel from a fracking facility in West Virginia and traverse Giles, Montgomery, Roanoke and Franklin Counties to a distribution center in Chatham.

But Mountain Valley Pipeline officials, running into resistance along most of the way, says it is still consideration other possible route.

Following the press conference, protestors marched in the cold and spitting snow and chanted on the streets of Floyd.