Bowling Green, OH Votes to Deny NEXUS Pipe Easement for City Land
All seven members of the Bowling Green City Council (Wood County) unwisely voted to reject an offer from Spectra Energy’s NEXUS Pipeline to lease 4 acres of city-owned land for the pipeline. Why unwise? Because the project is close to receiving its final federal approval, which will give it the right to use eminent domain to use the land anyway (see FERC Approves NEXUS Pipeline, Project on Track for 2017). Spectra offered $151,000 for the easement and was willing to follow an existing easement already in place for power lines. When (not if) NEXUS gets built, Bowling Green can expect to receive far less in the way of a lease payment. Even though the fix was in before the vote was taken, one lawless resident–Joe DeMare, a Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate in the most recent election (loser)–wouldn’t shut his yap and had to be escorted out by security. Apparently he thought there should be more public comment (i.e. camera and microphone time for himself) before the vote was taken. Whatever. Big Green antis celebrated the vote. We predict it will be a short-lived celebration…
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As MDN predicted, yesterday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved the NEXUS Pipeline project (see 
The city of Green in Summit County, OH has put NEXUS Pipeline on notice that if surveyors show up to survey in the city and if those surveyors don’t have permission from the landowner, or a judge’s order, those surveyors will be arrested and charged with trespassing. Apparently Green hasn’t gotten the memo that pipelines are the safest form of transportation on earth–period. NEXUS, as well as other pipeline projects, face a classic Catch-22 situation. In order to get the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to grant a certificate to build the pipeline, the pipeline company must first conduct initial surveys to plan the route. With a certificate from FERC in hand, the pipeline then has the power of eminent domain to use on recalcitrant landowners to build the pipeline across their land. The open question is whether or not the pipelines can use eminent domain to conduct the survey ahead of a full FERC certificate. That’s the Catch-22. Surveying doesn’t do a single thing to a property, other than a few guys and gals running around for a short time looking through a transit and taking measurements. It’s a shame that landowners, in some cases, won’t even allow that. So Green has put NEXUS and the world on notice that the city and its residents don’t want to participate in the riches that come from shale. Fine. Let them eat dirt…
The radicals at the Sierra Club are at it again. Causing private companies to expend big money to defend their Constitutional, capitalistic rights. The NEXUS Pipeline is a $2 billion, 255-mile interstate pipeline that will run from Ohio through Michigan and eventually to the Dawn Hub in Ontario, Canada. It is a critically needed pipeline to move Utica and Marcellus Shale gas from an over-saturated market in the northeast to markets in the Midwest and Canada. The Sierra Club has just sued DTE Energy, one of the sponsors of the project, falsely claiming DTE’s electric customers will end up paying more for electricity because of the pipeline…
As MDN previously reported, the dupes in Waterville, OH voted to pass a resolution on Tuesday that would block the construction of the NEXUS Pipeline, planned to go through city property (see 
We’ve written plenty in the past about the PA-based radical anti-drilling group called CELDF–Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (
Two weeks ago MDN told you that TransCanada is attempting to block Marcellus/Utica gas from entering the eastern Canadian market by lowballing pipeline transportation costs from western Canada (see 
Ohio’s Ninth District Court of Appeals has upheld the right of NEXUS Gas Transmission to enter onto private land in order to conduct surveys for a potential pipeline route. Ohio’s Sixth District Court previously made a similar ruing in favor of NEXUS. Top energy law firm Bricker & Eckler argued for NEXUS in both cases and turns in the following report:
Virulent anti-fossil fuel nutters who are opposed to Spectra Energy’s $2 billion, 255-mile NEXUS interstate pipeline that will run from Ohio through Michigan and eventually to the Dawn Hub in Ontario, Canada, have stayed up late at night reading through all of the comments sent to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The habit of antis is to generate a blizzard of negative comments to FERC on any given project, sometimes using the names of their children (see 
