Company sues owners of property

COLUMBUS (AP) — Owners of a natural gas pipeline that would extend from Colorado through Ohio have sued 77 landowners to acquire property for the project.

Rockies Express Pipeline LLC said the lawsuit it filed last week in U.S. District Court in Columbus on Friday was necessary because the company has not reached agreements with the property owners. The company will continue to negotiate with the landowners, spokesman Allan Fore said.

The parcels are among approximately 1,300 tracts the company is buying in 13 of Ohio’s 88 counties, he said.

Farmer and property owner Scott McClelland says he was not surprised by the lawsuit, but he wishes he could stop the company from taking nearly 14 acres of his land and more than six acres of his daughter’s land east of Lancaster in southeast Ohio.

“We have paid for the land and we have sweat equity in it and real equity in it, and I think it is a pathetic use of eminent domain — for a for-profit project,” McClelland said.

The company asked the court to appoint a commission to determine how much to pay the owners of the properties.

The 1,679-mile pipeline is being built to carry natural gas from Wyoming and Colorado to the Midwest and the eastern United States.

The 713-mile phase from Colorado to Missouri is up and running. The next phase is a 638-mile pipeline segment extending from Missouri to Clarington, Ohio, at the West Virginia state line.