Pipeline Wars 3 — What a Blast!

In my previous post 2 weeks ago, I outlined the stories of 2 particular families who lost property rights to a pipeline. The pipeline companies in both cases wielded the hammer of eminent domain against the families, even though the resulting lines have been designed to function as export conduits, and therefore not designed to serve any public benefit, which is the supposed justification for the use of eminent domain. Both families were forced to grant pipeline companies a right of way, despite strongly opposing the presence of a gas pipeline going through their land.

In one case, the pipeline chainsaw gang massacred the maple trees that provided the basis for a family maple syrup business. In a related development that I didn’t mention in the post, a property owner along the proposed right of way faced the possibility of having to sacrifice an established Christmas tree business to pipeline crew chainsaws. Such stories, and much worse, abound along proposed pipeline routes. Not long ago, one homeowner in MI fought and lost, and had to live with a pipeline going into his back yard less than 10 feet from his back door.

That’s not all — even if you don’t own property that falls within a pipeline’s proposed path, the monster can still hurt you if it gets too close. How? By having your home fall within, or perilously close to, the blast zone.

Less than a year after a woman relocated back to her home town of Deerfield, MA, following the purchase of an expensive house there, she learned, in March of 2015, that a proposed gas pipeline, if built, would pass within 500 feet of her home, putting her inside the so-called 900-foot incineration zone. The woman had paid nearly $6K in taxes for 2014 on the place, which carries an assessed value of $382K, and she had originally purchased it with the intention of operating a Bed and Breakfast business at the location. Before learning about the pipeline proposal, she had completed a series of renovations on the place as well.

As soon as she found herself inside the incineration zone, the woman felt trapped. She believed she could no longer plan on running a B and B, due to liability concerns, yet she also couldn’t sell the place for anything approaching fair market value, because home buyers generally don’t like the sound of the phrase incineration zone. She herself would not want to stay in her home if that pipeline went into the ground, because she doesn’t want to live under the constant threat of a fireball suddenly swallowing her.

Recently the woman, and other opponents of this particular pipeline, including myself, got some good news, when Kinder Morgan announced in late April that it would suspend the project. So does that announcement end the woman’s problems? Of course not. This proposed pipeline monster casts a long shadow, and it could easily take a good half-dozen years or longer to rest assured that the beast will not reappear. In the meantime, it actually could reappear, at any moment.

So what should she do now? Spend more money to develop a B and B business that she may not actually get to operate? That doesn’t sound promising. Should she try to sell the place? As long as the incineration zone possibility lingers in the air, it will lower the value of the property.

But hey, how bad is it really, living in a blast zone? It might not seem so bad until the blast happens, but when it does, it can get really, really, really bad. The day after Kinder Morgan’s late April announcement, a Spectra gas pipeline in western PA blew up, totally destroyed one property, melted some sections of road and caused major problems with lots of other properties in the region. According to one of my friends who has studied the official documents, the actual blast zone far exceeded the official one, and if so, that would only deepen the dilemma of the Deerfield woman, and others like her who, through no fault of their own, suddenly find themselves too close to the potential path of a proposed gas pipeline beast.

The pipeline wars go on, with the pipeline companies blatantly abusing the right of eminent domain, and the authorities all too often siding with the petrochemical industry rather than citizen property rights, although significant exceptions do exist. The sooner we free our society from fossil fuel dependency, the sooner we’ll free ourselves of new monsters, both known and unknown, that the fossil fuel industries might want to unleash.

Pipeline Wars 2 — What Property Rights?

In Part 1, I gave the basic outline of the process by which pipeline companies routinely get the power of eminent domain handed to them by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Once empowered to steal landowner rights, those pipeline gangs quickly set to work stomping all over places where they’re not welcome. Newspapers along proposed pipeline routes have regularly carried stories over the past few years about pipeline surveyors repeatedly trespassing on properties regardless of landowner objections and opposition.

Basically, the pipeline companies do whatever they want, regardless of legal implications, and as often as not, they get away with it, though not always. In the case of Mercer Co., NJ, county officials had given PennEast surveyors permission to survey public lands in the county, and then had to revoke that permission when they discovered PennEast employees conducting soil borings, which could potentially prove harmful to the environment.

The conflict between petrochemical industry desires and essential property rights has set up an interesting dynamic among self-described conservatives who supposedly stand on an ideology of support for property rights, but who, in the real world, and in positions of political power, generally cater to industry wishes. To their credit, a Republican majority in Georgia voted about a month ago to suspend a major pipeline project called the Palmetto, mainly due to property rights concerns.

All too often, though, the legal apparatus aligns itself seamlessly with the petrochemical industry. In February, a federal judge in Scranton, PA, handed over the property rights of the Holleran family in New Milford to the Constitution pipeline gang, who showed up on March 1, with a number of heavily-armed guards, and started a chainsaw massacre of the maple trees that had for many years supplied the sap for the family’s maple syrup business, called North Harford Maple. It remains an open question as to what just compensation actually means in such a circumstance.

Similarly, at the end of March, Sunoco Logistics sent its chainsaw gang to massacre trees on the Gerhart property in Huntingdon County, PA, cutting a path for its Mariner East 2 pipeline project. This beast, designed to carry natural gas liquids from the fracking fields of OH, WV and western PA, will, if completed, terminate in the Marcus Hook, PA, area, just as the Mariner East 1 already does. The Marcus Hook terminal, not so coincidentally, serves as an export facility from which Sunoco began ethane shipments in February.

As badly as I felt over the Holleran situation, being a personal friend of some of the New Milford protestors, and also being someone who had considered making the drive to NM, I still think the Gerhart episode makes the case against the eminent domain contradictions so much more self-evident. The company seeking to build the Constitution pipeline has tried at least in part to maintain the fiction of public benefit from its proposed project, whereas Sunoco doesn’t even bother with the lies when it comes to the ME 2. The company makes no secret of the fact that it ships the natural gas liquids to Europe, and that it has large contracts to fill in that regard. No public interest gets fulfilled by the Mariner East 2 — the only thing that gets filled are the wallets of Sunoco’s executives.

So then, what gives Sunoco the right to cut down trees and build a pipeline across the Gerhart property, where the company’s presence is obviously not wanted? The Gerhart family has owned that property since 1982, and has participated in a state program to preserve forestland on their property, but such facts clearly mean nothing to a greedy petrochemical company. Butane, propane and ethane moving through a pipeline are all, by the way, quite explosive — I mentioned in an earlier piece about 2 teenagers in TX who died when a Koch Industries butane pipeline exploded back in 1996 — so the Gerharts have more than one reason to not want the Mariner East 2 running through their place.

So what gives Sunoco the right? FERC gave it to them, and a judge put his rubber stamp of legal approval on it as well, even though the Mariner East 2 will serve no public good, and therefore, no actual justification exists for the eminent domain hammer Sunoco holds over the heads of the Gerhart family, and any others who might oppose the pipeline gang. 

The Gerhart and Holleran stories are but 2 of many that revolve around the abuse of eminent domain. Some months ago an Ohio landowner walked out of a court and said to a reporter, “I thought we lived in America.” He apparently thought he had property rights, and maybe he did, until a pipeline company wanted to take them away.

I’ll have more pipeline stories to share in Part 3, but the main point to understand is that currently, pipeline companies commonly steal property rights through eminent domain, for projects that plainly do not benefit the public, and FERC empowers them to do so, all to serve a shared monetary interest. 

One further note: I mentioned in an earlier piece about the Koch Bros. that David and Charles do happen to be in the pipeline business, and as anti-government as they claim to be, somehow, I still feel quite certain that they’re perfectly happy to wield an eminent domain hammer that’s been handed over to their company by the government.