The Oregonian has published another in its series about the Jordan Cove LNG project. The article focuses upon the controversial use of eminent domain to acquire rights to private property presumably for the “public good.” What qualifies as a public benefit is a matter of contention with the federal regulators viewing the high costs to small rural communities being outweighed by the modest benefits to the country as a whole.
Gas exports will provide a small “net benefit” over time, some studies conclude. Those benefits are concentrated in gas producing states and other locales along the supply chain, including Coos Bay. So the U.S. Department of Energy has determined that Jordan Cove is “not inconsistent with the public interest.”
But the local toll may be a heavy price to pay for a ‘small “net benefit”‘.
Along its 230-mile path, contractors would clear-cut public and private forests, tunnel under hundreds of rivers and streams and plow across more than 400 parcels of privately owned land.
The projects backers say they can accomplish all this in a fair and equitable manner, while minimizing environmental and property damages. They say eminent domain is a last resort, used only if it’s impossible to reach a mutually agreeable deal with a landowner, and only after an impartial arbitrator determines a fair price for easements and damage.
Yet the threat of condemnation is the company’s silent partner in any negotiation. And many landowners want nothing to do with the project.
Read it here
It’s not just the freeway size path of the pipeline. It’s the fact that at the proposed 1400 psi, if there is a rupture, incidental, accidental, or intentional, the fireball will be one quarter mile wide in any direction. Should fry a few of Messerle’s cows. Isn’t it interesting how he did not care about others with his plans to flood the western US. But he is a NIMBY when it comes to the lovely pipeline.