The Man vs. the Pipeline
A dark side of the fracking boom: more eminent domain
If you're a fan of the Ornery Holdout Battling Eminent Domain genre of newspaper writing, you should read Anya Litvak's profile of David Rheinlander in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Here's the lede:
If David Rheinlander believes that his 5.5 acres, which include woods and a modular home, are worth $10 million, then who exactly is the Rover Pipeline or the federal government, for that matter, to say otherwise?
"If they don't like it, go around me," Mr. Rheinlander said less than a week after Energy Transfer Partners, the Texas-based firm developing a massive natural gas pipeline, asked a federal court to condemn a 150-foot-wide line across his Washington County [Pennsylvania] land so it can cut down his trees as soon as possible.
Litvak goes on to describe Rheinlander's early encounters with the company's land agents ("Even during those amicable conversations, the phrase eminent domain was a frequent garnish, he recalled") and the ensuing arguments over safety, property rights, and where the best route for the pipeline would be. My knee-jerk sympathies, as always, are with the holdout. The company claims that it faces "billions of dollars of lost revenue" without the property, which to me suggests they should pay Rheinlander more than the $3,500 they're offering, but I guess they think they've found a legal workaround.
The story also gives us a glimpse of a bigger issue, a dark side of the fracking boom:
The number of eminent domain pipeline cases has risen in proportion to the pace at which pipelines are being built to accommodate the shale gas boom—which is to say, it has ballooned…
Read the whole thing here.
