Many of these lines were built in just the past five years to transport natural gas from the Marcellus Shale region to Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, where the hydraulic fracturing has grown. Only in West Virginia has natural gas production quadrupled in the last decade.
Such rapid growth has also led to hundreds of safety and environmental violations, mostly under the reduced supervision of the Trump administration and streamlined approvals for pipeline projects. While energy companies promise economic benefits for depressed regions, pipeline projects increase the lives of the people who follow them.
As a technical and professional academic of communication focused on how rural communities face complex problems and a geography scholar specializing in human-environment interactions, we partnered to study the effects of the development of the pipes on the Appalachian wheels. In 2020 we did a survey and talked to dozens of people who lived near gas pipelines in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
What we have found illuminates the stress and uncertainty that communities experience when pipelines change landscape. Residents live in fear of disasters, the noise of construction and the anxiety of not having control over their own land.
“None of this is fair”
Appalachians are no strangers to environmental risk. The region has a long and complicated history with extractive industries, including coal and hydraulic fractures. However, it is rare to hear first-hand the long-term effects of industrial infrastructure development in rural communities, especially with regard to pipelines, as they are the result of more recent growth in the energy sector.
For all the people we spoke to, the pipeline development process was very frequent and often confusing.
Some reported never hearing of a planned pipeline until an “earth man” – a representative of the gas company – knocked on the door offering to buy a portion of his property; others said they found out through newspaper articles or posts on social media. Everyone we spoke to agreed that the burden would eventually fall on them to find out what was going on in their communities.
A West Virginia woman said that after learning of plans for an oil pipeline feeding a petrochemical complex several miles from her home, she began doing her own research. “I thought to myself, how did this happen? We didn’t know anything about it,” he said. “It’s not fair. None of that is fair … We’re stuck in a polluting company.”
“Lawyers ate us”
If residents do not want oil pipelines on their land, they can take legal action against the energy company instead of making a deal. However, this can lead to the use of eminent domains.
Eminent dominance is a right granted by the Federal Energy Regulation Commission to companies to access private property if the project is considered important for public needs. Compensation is decided by the courts based on the assessed value of the land, without taking into account the intangibles related to the loss of land surrounding the house, such as the loss of future income.
Through this process, residents can be forced to accept a sum that does not take into account all the effects of building pipes on their land, such as the damage that heavy equipment will cause to the surrounding land and access roads. .
A man we talk to has been living on his family land for decades. In 2018, a representative of the company asked him for permission to install a new pipe parallel to one that had existed since 1962, far away from his home. However, the crews had problems with the steep terrain and wanted to install it much closer to home. Dissatisfied with the new location, and seeing that the erosion of the pipe construction on the ridge behind the house was causing washes, he hired a lawyer. After several months back and forth with the company, he said, “They gave me a choice: sign the contract or do the eminent domain. And my lawyer advised me that I didn’t want to make an eminent domain.”
The construction of pipes crosses the field of a farmer. Erin Brock Carlson, CC BY-SA
There was a unanimous sense among the 31 people we interviewed that companies have seemingly endless financial and legal resources, making court battles virtually impossible to win. Non-disclosure agreements can effectively silence owners. Also, lawyers licensed to work in West Virginia who do not yet work for gas companies can be hard to find and legal fees can become too much for residents to pay.
A woman, the main land caretaker her family had been cultivating for 80 years, was facing significant legal fees after a dispute with a gas company. “We were the first and last to fight them, and then people saw what would happen to them, and they just didn’t have it: it cost us money to get lawyers. The lawyers ate us,” he said.
The pipeline now crosses what were once hayfields. “We haven’t had any income with this hay since they took it out in 2016,” he said. “It’s nothing more than a patch of weeds.”
“I mean, who are you calling?”
Twenty-six of the 45 respondents reported that they felt their property value had decreased as a result of the construction of pipes, citing the risks of water pollution, explosion and unusable land.
Many of the 31 people we interviewed were concerned about the same kind of long-term concerns as well as gas leaks and air pollution. Hydraulic fracturing and other natural gas processes can affect drinking water resources, especially if there are spills or incorrect storage procedures. In addition, methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and volatile organic compounds, which can pose health risks, are by-products of the natural gas supply chain.
Oil spills are one of the main concerns among landowners. Erin Brock Carlson, CC BY-SA
“Forty years after that, will they be able to keep track and keep up with the infrastructure? I mean, I can smell the gas while I’m here,” one man told us. His family had seen the natural gas industry move to its part of West Virginia in the mid-2010s. In addition to a 36-inch pipe on his property, there are several smaller wells and lines. . “This year, the company that serves the smaller lines has had nine leaks … that’s what really worries me,” he said.
The main concern mentioned by the respondents was the explosions.
According to data from 2010 to 2018, an explosion of pipes occurred, on average, every 11 days in the US. Although major gas pipeline explosions are relatively rare, when they do occur they can be devastating. In 2012, a 20-inch transmission line exploded in Sissonville, West Virginia, damaging five homes and leaving four lanes of Interstate 77 that looked “like a tar pit.”
Extending these fears is the constant lack of communication from businesses to residents living along the pipelines. About half of the people we interviewed reported that they had no contact from the company to call directly in the event of an emergency to a pipe, such as a spill, leak, or explosion. “I mean, who are you calling?” asked a woman.
“We keep doing the same”
Several interviewees described a fatalistic attitude towards energy development in their communities.
Energy analysts expect gas production to increase this year after a slowdown in 2020. Pipeline companies expect to continue building. And while the Biden administration is likely to reinstate some regulations, the president has said he would not ban fracking.
“It’s a little sad because they think, once again, that this will be the salvation of West Virginia,” one owner said. “The harvest of the wood was, then the excavation of the coal was our salvation … And then the third. We continue to do the same.”
Erin Brock Carlson is an assistant professor of writing and professional editing at West Virginia University.
Martina Angela Caretta is a tenured professor of human geography at Lund University.
Disclosure statements: Dr. Carlson has received funding for this project from the West Virginia University Humanities Center.
Dr. Caretta has received funding for this project from the Heinz Foundation and the West Virginia University Humanities Center.
It is republished with permission from The Conversation.
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