The Supreme Court of Virginia has agreed to hear another appeal challenging a controversial state law that allows surveyors for natural gas pipeline companies to enter private property without an owner’s consent.
Chuck Lollar, a Norfolk-based lawyer representing six landowners along the route of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, said he learned this week that the full court will hear the appeal filed in May. A hearing date has not been not scheduled.
Meanwhile, survey crews working for Mountain Valley Pipeline are venturing back into the field. A circuit court hearing Thursday in Franklin County granted the pipeline company a court order to proceed with surveying a property there, and an order signed Wednesday by a Roanoke County Circuit Court judge paved the way for surveyors to return to the Terry family properties on Bent Mountain.
Lollar’s appeal, like two cases the high court heard in April, focuses on the law that sanctions pipeline surveying on private land even if an owner denies permission as long as the natural gas company has provided adequate notice as defined by the statute.
The law, enacted in 2004, has provoked bitter disputes between landowners and survey crews seeking routes through Virginia for the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline and the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. Each interstate project would bury a 42-inch diameter pipe designed to transport natural gas at high pressure.
Even though surveying continues, both projects say about 98 percent of that work in Virginia is complete.
The state Supreme Court has so far upheld the survey law. But Lollar’s appeal raises two challenges not previously heard by the court.
He contends that the surveys insisted upon by the Atlantic Coast Pipeline were not necessary to meet regulatory requirements, which he says is one condition of the law. And he argues that the law violates the Virginia Constitution because the surveys are an illegal taking of private property without compensation.
The Roanoke Times – Duncan Adams – 08.25.2017
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