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.
