Deb Ellison lives on 240 acres near Manchester, with a view of the River Raisin. But she’s concerned that her waterfront idyll is threatened. At the end of June, Ellison received a notice in the mail from ET Rover Pipeline, LLC. The company, which is owned by Texas-based Energy Transfer, informed her that a pipeline would likely be built near her home. She was invited to an open house for landowners on July 15.
At the Chelsea Comfort Inn conference center, she learned that the route would pass roughly fifty feet from her front door. “I felt sick,” she says.
Just two days later, Ellison got a call at work from her mother: surveyors were on Ellison’s land. Ellison got on the phone and told them to leave. But they were back the next day and again less than a week later, planting flags fifty feet from her front door and cutting down seedling trees that got in their way. “These people are like cowboys,” says Ellison. “They come in and do what they want.”
The forty-two-inch-diameter pipeline would move gas compressed to 1,100 pounds per square inch through Manchester, Bridgewater, Freedom, Lima, and Dexter townships. And Ellison is one of many concerned residents.
In late September, Sandy Hamilton-Tilly was astonished to see surveyors on her mother’s property in Manchester Township. She approached the men and found out they were working for ET Rover.
Hamilton-Tilly’s mother, who is eighty-nine, told her that the men had knocked on her front door and told her she had no choice but to sign a letter giving them permission to survey, because the pipeline would be running through her property whether she liked it or not. If she denied them access, they warned, the pipeline company would take her to court.
A third Manchester Township resident, Margaret Goodrich, seventy-five, says she initially sent the surveyors away–“I’m not letting some strange man with a giant pickup at my house”–but signed after getting a letter from ET Rover threatening legal action.
Lima Township supervisor Craig Maier says a resident came into his office recently to complain that his eighty-six-year-old mother had encountered three ET Rover surveyors, one of whom was armed, pushing her to give them access. Living in an area with feral hogs and coyotes, Maier isn’t bothered by guns. But he objects to the way they’re being used to intimidate landowners.
Vicki Granado, an ET Rover spokesperson, acknowledges that security personnel accompany their surveyors. “We need to make sure our employees and contractors are safe,” she says. Conflicts with property owners, Granado says, are “unfortunate. We’re following the processes and the procedures, and we would hope that, going forward, we can all work together in getting this done.”
Those procedures are tilted in the company’s favor. The surveyors on Ellison’s property overstepped their authority when they returned after being ordered to leave–“If someone denies them the right to go on to the property, they can’t just come back the next day unless they have a court order,” says Bingham Farms attorney Ronald Reynolds, past chair of the eminent domain committee of the State Bar of Michigan’s Real Property Law Section. But they can get a court order. In June, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which regulates pipelines, authorized ET Rover to investigate the feasibility and environmental impact of its proposed route. That includes the power to force landowners to allow surveyors onto their property.
The company plans to file a formal application with FERC in January 2015. If the commission approves the pipeline–as it does about two times out of three–ET Rover will gain the power of eminent domain. That means it can force owners to sell the easements it needs to run the pipeline through their property.
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Western Washtenaw County is in the path of an economic juggernaut. A glut of gas “fracked” from shale deposits is firing up the U.S. economy, and now Canada wants in on the action: the 800-mile ET Rover pipe will connect Pennsylvania gas fields to a distribution hub near Defiance, Ohio, then on through Michigan to the “Chemical Valley” near Sarnia, Ontario. Granado says that 60 percent of the gas flowing through the pipeline–3.25 billion cubic feet per day–will remain in the U.S., while the rest is destined for Canada.
ET Rover’s fact sheet says it will deliver gas to MichCon. But Erica Donerson, a spokesperson for DTE, which owns MichCon, says the company has no plans related to the project. Consumers Energy won’t decide whether to access the pipeline until the route is finalized, says spokesperson Debra Dod. (Granado says the pipeline company is “having discussions with both MichCon and Consumers as well as other Michigan utilites.”)
What it won’t do, says Lima Township’s Maier, is expand local gas delivery in his township–even though “we have been crying out here for natural gas service for years.” Manchester Township supervisor Gene DeRossett says the same is true in his township.
Township supervisors and state representatives say they never heard about the project from the company. Instead, they learned about it from unhappy landowners like Ellison. State rep Gretchen Driskell, who represents the area, says the company hasn’t been open or communicative. No elected officials were invited to the company’s July open house, which was limited to landowners.
So Driskell has been holding her own town hall meetings. A session at Dexter’s Creekside School in September gave elected officials their first chance to speak with ET Rover representatives. Driskell says she is particularly concerned about how ET Rover surveyors are dealing with landowners–they’ve been “very aggressive and very threatening to seniors,” she says. So she found it helpful when company representatives outlined what people should do if they don’t want surveyors on their property. All property owners should receive a mailed notification like the one Ellison received. When they do, Driskell advised, “Call the person whose name is on the letter and tell them they’re not welcome. Otherwise, the surveyors will show up.” To go further, the company will need to get a court order.
DeRossett says the lack of transparency has been a big problem. After Driskell’s September meeting, he said he hoped that the company had a better understanding of the importance of communicating with the elected officials who represent the people in the path of its pipeline. The company did send representatives to another event in Lima Township in October–but that appears to be the limit of its cooperation. At a second Dexter session in October, Driskell told the crowd that she’d expected ET Rover reps to attend, but they “apparently aren’t doing any more public meetings.”
ET Rover’s stance comes on the heels of vehement protests in Oakland County, where portions of the pipeline originally were slated. Many Michigan landowners were still smarting from property damage that resulted from the rebuilding of an Enbridge oil pipeline after a section burst near Marshall four years ago, spilling 877,000 gallons of heavy crude into the Kalamazoo River. “A lot of landowners endured Enbridge and were concerned they would have to go through it all over again,” says Jeff Insko, who lives on the Enbridge line and is author of the Line 6B Citizens Blog. “Because of that, landowners across Oakland County were particularly vociferous at the prospect of another pipeline.” There were reports of the surveyors confronting angry landowners with shotguns. The pipeline was ultimately rerouted north into Genesee and Lapeer Counties.
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Pipeline companies are given extensives powers in the name of economic efficiency–it’s important that natural gas be able to move freely from where it’s produced to where it’s needed. ET Rover materials say construction will employ a temporary workforce of up to 3,000 people, and Granado says the company expects to pay approximately $1 billion to the contractors doing the work. And she says the Michigan section of the pipeline would pay about $32 million a year in state and federal taxes.
Granado says that the company expects to pay about $100 million for easements, which works out to a bit less than $25 per foot. According to Driskell, ET Rover will be buying permanent fifty-foot easements, expanding temporarily to 75-100 feet during construction. Lima Township resident Amy Potter, who attended an ET Rover event, says that “we were told that for the permanent easement they offer 125 percent of the value of that portion of the property and 50 percent of the value for the temporary easement.”
“The price should be based on a number of factors, most importantly the fair market value of the property,” says Reynolds, the eminent domain expert. “However, there could be damage to the remainder of the property, which can often be overlooked or missed due to the agency hurrying the process along. Sometimes project deadlines get in the way of a property valuation process, resulting in offers that do not meet the constitutional requirement of just compensation. To do a good job of estimating values, the agency should have a state licensed appraiser evaluating each individual property.”
David Lattie, an attorney representing Atlas Township in Genesee County, is urging property owners who may be on the route to get an attorney now. “In addition to assisting with the survey/property access, an attorney would be important if the company proceeds with condemnation,” he emails. “These are cases in Circuit or Federal court that require some expertise to maximize the compensation to the homeowner.”
Driskell told the Dexter audience that “ET Rover did say that this is a movable line … it can be moved on the property in either direction, a quarter mile … I think they basically drew a line, and now they’re trying to see the community response … For property owners who haven’t started the conversation, make sure you tell them where you want it on your property.”
Deb Ellison, who found survey flags fifty feet from her front door, says that an ET Rover official told her verbally that they would move the line further out. As of late October, however, she had yet to see that in writing.
Driskell encourages those concerned about the pipeline to send in comments to the FERC. Tamara Young-Allen, FERC spokesperson, says the federal agency will be hosting public meetings in the area in November and December to find out about locals’ environmental concerns. In deciding whether to approve the project, FERC will consider all public comments. “This is a rigorous review process,” she says.
Laura Rubin, executive director of the Huron River Watershed Council, points out that the pipeline route runs through the Waterloo and Pinckney state recreation areas and many sensitive wetlands. “These are some of our highest-quality natural areas,” Rubin says.
The biggest issue with pipelines, she says, is that “they all have the potential to spill.” And, because they are overseen by the federal government, they can’t be regulated at the local level. Four years after the Enbridge spill, the Kalamazoo River is still being cleaned up at a cost approaching $1 billion. “It’s really devastating,” says Rubin, “and until you have one of those, you don’t think about it, because they put these things underground.”
For Deb Ellison, the environmental and safety issues only add to her concerns about the impact on her idyllic property if the pipeline goes through. “There are a number of people who are trying to fight this,” she says, “but it will be tough.”
