LEETONIA Eminent domain at center of fight

Landowners say eminent domain is hard to accept.
By NANCY TULLIS
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
LEETONIA -- Although a group of suppliers has withdrawn a proposal to build a natural gas pipeline here, a grass-roots group that fought five years against the project says its work is far from over.
John Garwood of Leetonia, president of the Columbiana County Landowners' Association, said the group will now be able to devote more time to fighting eminent-domain laws.
Eminent domain allows government agencies and some private, for-profit companies to buy or lease private property for public use whether or not the landowner agrees.
Garwood said landowners opposed to the pipeline find eminent-domain rights of for-profit companies difficult to accept.
The proposed pipeline was to cross 100 acres Garwood and his wife, Linda, own in Fairfield Township.
Garwood said eminent domain has been the underlying issue all along, but the group put most of its effort into thwarting the pipeline construction.
He said with eminent domain laws in place, "There's nothing that says these same companies or others like them won't come around tomorrow and try all this again."
Landowners' objections
Garwood said that area landowners understand the need for public improvements such as highways and utilities but that there has to be a system in place that is more fair to the landowners.
The landowners sign a lease agreement based on a lump-sum payment rather than annual compensation.
Garwood said that although landowners are compensated, they are left to deal with any damage to crops or property.
Changing the rules means changing the law, and that starts by lobbying local, then state and federal legislators, Garwood said.
He said if companies such as the natural gas suppliers are to make money during the entire time a pipeline is in place, for example, then so should the landowners.
"They should make the landowners partners," Garwood said.
Fred Ward of Columbiana lives on a 225-acre Fairfield Township farm that has been in his family since 1828.
Now retired, Ward rents the farmland to others. He said with frontage on three roads, he's had plenty of opportunities to parcel off the land to developers.
"We've resisted that," he said. "We want this to remain a farm."
He said eminent domain by the government is part of being a property owner. Eminent domain by profit-making companies, however, is another matter.
The difference
"The government comes and says they're going to build a highway or a bridge -- you expect that. Sometimes people get hurt, but the government needs that right. The private companies, though -- that rubs us the wrong way."
Herman Miller and Todd Miller, one of his five sons, raise beef cattle and crops on 175 acres in Fairfield Township.
He said the proposed pipeline was to cut through the middle of his farm and would have been within 200 feet of the two houses there.
Miller said he didn't like the idea that the pipeline companies wanted to pay upfront and only once for the lease agreements.
The natural gas suppliers wanted the underground pipeline to link the East Coast with a supply of cheaper heating fuel from Canada. It would have stretched across nearly all of Ohio -- including Columbiana County -- and about a third of neighboring Pennsylvania, connecting to pipelines on both ends.
The gas suppliers were to have the pipeline constructed by July. A hearing before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on behalf of the gas suppliers seeking an extension to November 2004 was to be Wednesday.
The gas suppliers, however, told the FERC Monday that it didn't have enough customers willing to buy its natural gas.
tullis@vindy.com