Landowners can't fight pipeline
Bill Goldman, an eminent-domain attorney from Columbus, struck a glum tone on a rainy Tuesday evening as he spoke to a roomful of landowners about an imminent natural gas pipeline planned for Richland and Crawford counties.
"I, honest to God, don't know of any way to stop it," Goldman said, speaking of Energy Transfer's proposed Rover pipeline, which would transport natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale gas plays in Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio through this region.
The pipe would be 42 inches in diameter, among the largest in the industry, with a compressor station planned for somewhere along the route, possibly south of Shelby, although that proposed location may change.
"If we knew of any way to defeat these lines, we would. We're like an umbrella in a rainstorm," Goldman said to the landowners, most of them farmers, as they sat in a building at the Richland County Fairground, drying off from the rain outside.
Goldman's law firm, Goldman & Braunstein, LLP, is representing 60 property owners along the pipeline route, with an expectation that it will ultimately work with 200 clients as they negotiate easements with Energy Transfer, Rover's operator. Goldman emphasized that there are plenty of other attorneys who do what he does.
"But you will need representation," he said. "The perception is these pipelines are extremely dangerous, although they rarely explode. But they will diminish your property values."
He cautioned landowners against being lured into negotiating with land agents, independent contractors who have been roaming north central Ohio this year to map out the best route for the pipeline.
"They're arrogant and tend to run over people, and will offer you a fraction, as low as $10 to $30 a foot, of what the company will ultimately pay. It should be over $150 a foot," the attorney said.
"We're not intimidated by these people. In fact, we have an extreme dislike for them."
While property owners will have no say over whether the Rover pipeline can cross their land — an interstate entity, it's regulated by the federal government — the company is required to compensate landowners via an easement contract for the land's loss of value.
"Easements transfer property rights, and they can last forever. That's why the way they're written is crucial," Goldman said, adding that his firm attempts to accomplish a clearance of 60 inches above the pipeline once it's in the ground.
Goldman & Braunstein hosted a similar meeting in August in the Crawford County village of New Washington, which was very well attended. About 50 people showed up for Tuesday's meeting in Mansfield.
The latest map detailing the pipeline's proposed route has it traversing Richland County in a nearly straight line from east to west, from near the crossroads of Pavonia in eastern Richland County to below Shelby, then northwest into Crawford County, where it would pass very close to the village of Tiro, south of New Washington, just north of Chatfield, and then up into Seneca County above Lykens.
At Tuesday's meeting Goldman fielded questions about suing the energy company ("a breathtaking experience," he warned), to the future of his law firm after he and his partner retires, to technical agricultural questions about soil compaction, weed control and fertility.
John Greathouse, who lives on Myers Road south of Shelby, said the Rover Pipeline has been mapped to go through the back of his property.
"I'm concerned about the compressor station. I've heard that will take up about 30 acres," he said of the facility that will pressurize the gas to keep it moving through the pipeline.
Goldman said he didn't expect any eminent-domain cases to come out of the siting of the Rover pipeline, with monetary settlements instead being reached in easement negotiations.
"They don't have the time to go to court," he said of Energy Transfer. "Their goal is to get the pipeline in the ground, because it's worth a fortune to them."
Eminent domain is a legal process whereby a governmental agency can expropriate private land for public use against the wishes of the landowner, and is spelled out in the bottom half of the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment.
If residents of Crawford and Richland counties aren't already familiar with it, they will be soon. There are at least four other proposed natural gas pipelines, in various exploratory stages, that could be routed through this area.
TransCanada is very early in the process of possibly extending a pipeline that could follow the Richland-Knox county line, entering Crawford County near the Morrow County village of Iberia. That company has yet to make a preliminary filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the proposed project.
Energy Transfer already has done so, for its Rover pipeline, and by January plans to issue its final filing with FERC, followed, Goldman believes, by the issuance of a certificate of public necessity six to nine months later.
"At that point the ball game is really over," he said.
thill3@nncogannett.com
419-521-7283
Twitter: @ToddHillMNJ