PA Landowners' Rights Placed At Risk By PA PUC

Here is the article:

 

Link to Article

 

Basically if you own PA land, you just got your rights impugned.  With eminent domain they can put the gathering pipeline wherever they want . . . even if you have an existing agreement.

 

If you want a gathering pipeline across your land, but also want a fair price for them tearing you up:

 

Fuggetaboutid.  They can threaten you with condemnation and take whatever portion of your land they want at their price.

 

If you don't want a gathering pipeline:  You're screwed.  They can just condemn and take your land for it.  You say you're worried about explosion potential, rights of way, loss of privacy, clear cutting of your trees, liability?  Sorry.  You lose.  That line is going in anyway, regardless your wishes and preferences.  

 

Only possible help, and this is highly speculative and difficult:

 

Obtain a waiver of eminent domain in your lease.  Good luck getting that.  It would only apply to NSD (non surface development) leases anyway.  And as with any legal construct in the USA today, some lawyer will figure a way around it or tie you up in our corrupt court system until you die.

 

The power of eminent domain for gathering lines is a disaster for rural Pennsylvania landowners.  We have not had to face anything like this in the past.  It is a complete and total outrage.

 

Ubiquity and jeopardy:

 

PA landowners have always faced the possibility of eminent domain condemnation for natural gas transmission and major trunk lines.  Such lines exist, but compared with gathering lines they are not at all numerous and not nearly so ubiquitous.  Our jeopardy with gathering lines, by contrast, is multiplied many times over because each individual well is served by gathering lines.  And there will be a WHALE of a lot of individual wells before the Marcellus is completely developed.

 

So when they have the power to condemn your land for gathering lines it is a big deal.  In the past in PA, for over a hundred years, gathering lines were sited by mutual agreement between the gas company and the landowner.  No longer will this be the case.  The gas companies now have the upper hand.  And PA landowners will have to bend to their will.

 

You thought you owned your land?  You do not.  Not any longer.  Not really.

Views: 348

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by bill h on May 24, 2011 at 11:59pm

I'm not really sure what his means:

By a 3-2 vote, the commission tossed back to Administrative Law Judge Susan D. Colwell her recommendation to deny Laser's application for a "certificate of public convenience," which would grant it utility status and the right to wield eminent domain.

Permalink Reply by Frank Walker on May 25, 2011 at 2:06am

Bill

 

The key, I think, is these words of the story:

 

" . . . with a narrow charge: Determine if granting a certificate of public convenience is in the public interest."

 

As you know, Judge Colwell has held hearings on this matter all across PA during these last months.  In Susquehanna County, for example, one landowner testified a gas line company representative had demanded he and his wife sign.  They were hesitant to sign.  The representative threatened the landowner's wife, saying if they did not sign the pipeline company would use eminent domain to route the gas line right through this couple's house!  This was hyperbole, of course.  But the poor woman did not know it was hyperbole.  When it comes to threats and intimidation, the gas line people are worst of the worst.  No tactic is too tawdry for them to employ.  They are shameless.

 

That's the kind of testimony that resulted in Judge Colwell's having counselled the PUC against granting eminent domain power to these gathering line companies.  Chairman Cawley, as the story makes clear, also is strongly opposed.

 

What the PUC has done, with their 3 to 2 ruling, is to deny Judge Colwell any further freedom to rule against eminent domain itself for these gathering line companies.  I don't claim to have understanding of the convoluted and arcane processes beyond that.  But the writer of the story does have that understanding.  And the story speaks for itself. 

 

 

Permalink Reply by JOE REDDING on May 25, 2011 at 12:49am

This is an outrage, this is not "GOV. OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE". If those P.U.C. idots owened 50 ac. in say Tioga co. they would not want a pipeline in their FRONT YARD. WHAT IS THIS COUNTRY TURNING INTO? IT SOUNDS LIKE THE OLD USSR OF 1960. "God, please help us".

Permalink Reply by Frank Walker on May 25, 2011 at 2:18am

Joe absolutely right!!

 

But I note with sadness the paucity of responses akin to your own.  It appears the sheeple don't care when something this basic is stolen from them.  They care even less when their neighbors suffer the theft.  They simply can't be bothered.

 

People who no longer cherish their rights and freedoms are destined to lose quickly those few which remain.  And they have only themselves to blame!!  Such sheeple richly deserve the fate awaiting them.  Maybe in future, as the Utica is developed, and yet another new gathering line is force routed through their garden or causes a clear cut through their favorite grove of trees, maybe then they will awaken from their slumber.  But by then it will be too late.

Permalink Reply by Kathleen Elsie Gibbs on May 25, 2011 at 3:37am
They tried to intimidate us and our neighbors about 18 months ago. We held firm then and the main line is now through a field behind us and not through our yards as they wanted. It is far enough away to not raise our insurance rates. Had this gone two other places they want to place them our insurance rates on our homes would have doubled (I asked our insurance carrier).   Now if this happens it seems that  they can cut through our property to get to the main line and we will have no say in the matter.
Permalink Reply by Frank Walker on May 25, 2011 at 4:00am

Thank you, Kathleen.

 

I did not mention insurance in my OP because I did not think of it.  But I did mention explosion potential.  

And the insurance companies are not stupid.  They will not assume the heightened risk unless you pay them a fatter premium.

 

For over a hundred years, here in Pennsylvania, this did not matter.  When people have the right to say "no", as you did, and to negotiate a preferred pipeline routing, as you did, then everything is OK and fair.

 

Now all that has changed.

RSS

© 2024   Created by Keith Mauck (Site Publisher).   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service