An incomplete version of this story appeared in last Sunday’s Business section. It appears in full today.

Pipeline work likened to fights of old West

The way Michael Withrow sees it, negotiations with pipeline companies are much like Western settlers’ dealings with railroad expansion in the 19th century.

“The only thing missing is the firearms,” said Withrow, whose acreage off Fisher Ferry Road was crossed by Gulf South during the construction of its East Texas to Mississippi Expansion Project. The line went into service in January.

“I had a surveyor come up to me and say, ‘We’re gonna take your land whether you like it or not.”

Withrow, an engineer, said his suggestions to Gulf South to adjust its route for public safety measures — such as methods to lessen the electric conductivity caused by its proximity to high-voltage electrical wires — fell not only on deaf ears with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, but hostile ones.

He attributes the company’s inability to account for his calculations as a reason he was asked to withdraw written comments. Still, a legal fight nearly ensued and a settlement came the night before a trial was to start, Withrow said.

His suggestions to Midcontinent Express, a company looking to run a 500-mile natural gas line from southeast Oklahoma to south Alabama, have been on similar lines, and he has received a letter with which all affected landowners are faced — settle on easement terms or face an eminent domain suit.

He blames lax oversight by FERC and state laws allowing pipeline companies to gain title before federal energy regulators issue a certificate of public necessity.

Catherine Brown’s story is no different.

In one respect, her two-story home off Fisher Ferry is every bit the country hideaway she envisioned when she designed and built it more than a decade ago. Ten acres of land where her son grew up and many family pets have been buried are among hundreds of properties targeted by planners of the Midcontinent Express pipeline.

“I love the country,” Brown said wistfully as she began to pack away some belongings, her wooden floors quaintly creaking at her home, surrounded by a brick landscaped yard, overlooking a private lake. “It’s the natural beauty of it.”

But a sense of foreboding has overcome Brown’s paradise — as the small, wooden stakes in the ground near the driveway dwarf her perspective of her happy home. The conundrum for Brown and her husband, Steven, both longtime high school teachers, is more than just a few easement markers — her home may wind up in the hands of the pipeline company.

“I feel like I’m being jerked around. Everything is just crumbling,” Brown said.

Surveyors began showing up on site last spring to discuss running the pipeline near the entrance to her driveway, just yards from and seemingly parallel with the completed Gulf South pipeline along an Entergy-owned right-of-way.

In December, a construction official with the company informed Brown the company was not allowed to block access to property and a total buyout at fair market value was the only alternative.

But, when private appraisals outpaced the company’s offer, the Browns, still weary from a costly fight with Gulf South settled just before trial, had to consider a heartbreaking decision to leave the land passed down from her father.

“We were given no choice,” Brown said.

Their fate seemingly in hand, the family looked out of state for a new house and another nursing facility to care for Brown’s 82-year-old mother. Then, a phone call in March from a Midcontinent right-of-way official left the Browns further befuddled.

“They said they rescinded the offer to buy the property, and they’d purchase an easement,” Brown said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen next.”

Back-and-forth negotiations on how much property is obtained for pipeline projects is not uncommon.

FERC officials have said the agency does not get involved in talks on the ground between landowners and companies. Pipelines running through residential neighborhoods are commonplace, particularly in the Northeast, said FERC spokesman Shannon Jones at a hearing with landowners in March.

“From the planning process through construction and into operations, Midcontinent Express Pipeline strives to work cooperatively with our neighbors,” read part of a statement issued by public affairs spokesmen with Midcontinent.

“We know that infrastructure projects like MEP are challenging, and our goal is to be a good neighbor, working collaboratively with landowners to find mutually agreeable solutions wherever possible,” the statement said.

Fisher Ferry landowner Clyde McGehee says Midcontinent’s dealings appear to be in spirited cooperation with citizens.

“We’re happy. They’re working with us now,” McGehee said.

His horses have less land to roam due to the threat of objects caught in the netting holding together sheets of short grasses planted by Gulf South to replace trees. Soils, weakened by the use of heavy equipment, have eroded, leaving jagged holes.

The coming Midcontinent line will come about 25 feet from the door of McGehee’s barn, a distance that concerns him only to a point.

“We know it’s coming. There’s just so much you can do about it,” he said, emphasizing efforts to convince the company to move the line further from the side of his house.