The Sierra Club is a national environmental group striving for the preservation of the environment. During the early 1970s, Pete was very involved with the New River Group, part of the Virginia Chapter. It was in collaboration with the Sierra Club that Pete worked to fight the damming of the New River by the Appalachian Power Company’s proposed pumped-storage hydroelectric project.

That project, known as the Blue Ridge Project, would have placed two dams on the New River near Mouth of Wilson in Grayson County, Virginia. The plan called for eight reversible turbines generating 200MW each at the upper dam, and two conventional turbines capable of generating 100MW each at the lower dam. Roughly 70 miles of the free-flowing New River would have been converted into two lakes, and about 10% of the land in Grayson County would have been flooded — with many of the displaced residents living just upstream in North Carolina. Virginia and Alcohol

The New River is one of the oldest rivers in the world, and the fight to save it became one of the defining grassroots environmental battles of the era, drawing in ordinary citizens, landowners, and organizations like the Sierra Club who saw the river as worth protecting for future generations. Pete’s work with the New River Group was part of that larger movement, one small but committed piece of the effort that ultimately helped keep the New River running free.