Property rights and LNG
December 4th, 2007
Will Oregonians In Action get on board with this latest group? (Update: Perhaps OIA and 1000 Friends BOTH oppose the pipeline?) Betya they won’t!
Birkenfeld resident Marc Auerbach built his 800-square-foot home for maximum energy efficiency using salvage materials, superinsulation, solar panels and a recycled rainwater system. He doesn’t use natural gas at all.
But he could be getting a whole lot of it - flowing through a 3-foot-wide pipeline across his 60-acre property - if the proposed Palomar Gas Transmission pipeline is built by TransCanada National Corp. and Northwest Natural.
[...]
With pipeline routes constantly shifting and companies ultimately relying on eminent domain rules to push their projects through private property, landowners are left wondering what they can do to protect their investments.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime event,” said Auerbach. “It’s not like we have a team of lawyers and resources at our disposal.”
Last week, Auerbach started the Northwest Property Rights Coalition to fight the use of eminent domain in the federal pipeline siting process. The group already has 50 members.
The LNG sitings in Oregon are absolutely horrendous. Why should Oregon be California’s gas tank (as someone in the linked article notes)?
Kulongoski COULD veto LNG terminal sitings. It is true that the 2005 Energy Act limits what state’s can do, but my understanding is that the governor CAN veto. But, of course, he won’t. Kulongoski is incredibly anti-environment, and we should expect nothing from him in that regard.
And even David Wu is flaking and not leaning “strongly one way or the other.”
You can learn more about these projects here.
Oh, and here’s Northwest Property Rights Coalition, the newly-formed property “rights” group fighting the use of eminent domain to build gas pipelines. Here’s a great quote from that site:
We have approximately 150 acres of timber land in Cowlitz County. If the Bradwood Pipeline is approved, we stand to lose not only standing timber, but also prime plantations of Douglas fir that we replanted ourselves. It is between 10 and 15 years old. The proposed route will take the pipeline within 40 feet of our barn, built in the 1880’s. We are trying to maintain the land as a working farm, where my in-laws began their life here in 1932. This pipeline would decimate our land, running from the NW corner to the SE, where the HDD drilling point for the Cowlitz River would take out old pear trees and ruin our best pasture. We must work on our representatives to change the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that gave FERC the power to take our land from us under Eminent Domain. This is a gross miscarriage of justice.
Related posts: LNG and the Columbia: bad news, David Bragdon, infill, and the need for better land use laws (and politicians), David Bragdon HEARTS Oregonians In Action?
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