The lawyer for the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline on Tuesday asked the state Supreme Court to overturn a lower court order that blocked the developer from surveying the property of residents in Monroe County without the landowners' permission.
Charles Piccirillo urged the justices to allow Mountail Valley Pipeline LLC to resume the work, which was halted by an August 2015 ruling by Monroe County Circuit Judge Robert A. Irons.
Piccirillo downplayed any potential impacts from the surveys, telling the court that residents who oppose the pipeline proposal could raise issues later about whether MVP really has legal authority to use eminent domain for rights-of-way for construction across residents' property.
"It would involve no larger equipment," Piccirillo said. "These are people with boots on the ground. It is essentially non-invasive."
But Derek Teaney, an Appalachian Mountain Advocates lawyer for Monroe County residents Bryan and Doris McCurdy said that to allow the pipeline company onto their property without their permission violates a basic right of all West Virginians.
"The right to exclude others from private property is one of the most treasured strands in the bundle of property rights," Teaney told the justices.
The Mountain Valley Pipeline would run about 300 miles from northwestern West Virginia to southern Virginia. It is a joint project of EQT Midstream Partners, LP; NextEra US Gas Assets, LLC; WGL Midstream; and Vega Midstream MVP LLC.
EQT Midstream Partners will operate the pipeline and own a majority interest in the joint venture. The developers say the pipeline would help carry the "vast supply of natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale formations to markets in the Mid- and South-Atlantic United States." If completed, the project would extend the Equitrans transmission system in Wetzel County to Transcontinental Gas Pipeline's compressor station in Pittsylvania County, Virginia.
In some parts of rural West Virginia, there are growing concerns about the impacts on the environment and on small community life from the MVP project and about a variety of other natural gas pipeline projects that are various stages of development.
At issue in the case before the Supreme court is a West Virginia law that Teaney says allows private companies to use eminent domain to take property - or survey property without owner permission - only if plans for the property by those private companies involve a specific "public use." Irons agreed with Teaney, and pipeline promoters were concerned enough that they tried unsuccessfully during this year's legislative session to get that law changed.
Mountain Valley Pipeline appealed the ruling by Irons and the Supreme Court heard oral argument on Tuesday morning in Charleston.
Justice Robin Davis commented during the argument that the pipeline company might well win the case if the court only needed to look at the narrow issue of any damage the surveys might do to the property. Davis said that the issue of whether the pipeline would provide a "public use" might be better settled by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and be applied to the actual condemnation of a right-of-way under eminent domain, rather than simply to the narrow issue of a property survey.
But Davis also wondered aloud about the broader implications of the case.
"I, for one, am tired of out-of-state companies coming in and raping our state and not providing the citizens their fair share," Davis said.
Teaney said that West Virginia law requires the pipeline company to establish that its project would be of a public use in order to perform the land surveys in the first place. In the lawsuit, Teaney and his clients allege the MVP project does not have a public use because "not a single West Virginian will have access to or otherwise use gas carried by the pipeline."
Piccirillo urged the court to consider a broader definition of "public use" that would include jobs and economic benefits to gas drillers and shippers in West Virginia.
Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kward@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1702 or follow @kenwardjr on Twitter.