A 79-year-old landowner in western Georgia is challenging a major energy company after learning that a $3.5 billion natural gas pipeline project was moved away from a utility executive’s home and routed across 2.5 miles of his private land. Donnie Peek bought his first 150-acre property in Muscogee County in 1967. Over the following decades, he expanded it into a 1,600-acre estate along the Chattahoochee River. The Southern System Expansion 4 project is managed by Southern Natural Gas (SNG), a joint venture between energy companies Kinder Morgan and Southern Co. The new plan sends the pipeline around the home of Chris Lane, a 25-year Southern Co. power plant manager, while placing the added burden on Peek’s property.
Revised plans released earlier this year showed that developers had changed the route. After discovering the sudden route change, he filed a formal challenge with federal energy regulators. The project originally followed an existing utility easement that crossed four separate residential properties.
To cover the extra distance, developers added about 1,400 feet of pipe and placed 2.5 miles of continuous pipeline across Peek’s land. The system stretches 7,600 miles from Texas to the American South-East. ” In an affidavit filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on 28 August, Peek described a conversation with Lane.
Because it can lower costs, limit damage to land, and reduce legal disputes, using existing rights of way is common in the industry. Because of his position, lane) would allow the pipeline to cross his property.'” Peek also said in his filing that a representative of Pinnacle Resources Group, which was working as an intermediary for SNG, told him that Lane’s property could not be taken through eminent domain. When developers first announced plans to put the new gas pipeline along that same easement, Peek did not object.
The detour adds millions of dollars to the cost of the interstate gas network, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In a formal response, it said that going back to the old route would “impact landowners and potentially more landowners. “That’s when I said, ‘Well, this thing smells,'” Peek told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Peek said the executive told him that “there was ‘no price at which he (Mr. In a statement provided to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the company said: “There is no policy that exempts Southern Co. employees from this process. SNG said the route was changed to reduce the number of affected landowners from four to one. The company said the current route “represents the option that best balances overall landowner impacts with the project’s operational needs.”
A propane pipeline built in the 1960s already crossed his property. The revised plan, however, left the existing right of way as it came near Lane’s home. The new route turns directly east along the edge of Lane’s property. It then makes a sharp turn north to completely avoid his home. In a March letter to Kinder Morgan’s Land and Right-of-Way Department, Peek asked the company to return to the original straight route. The company rejected his request. Peek became concerned after learning that the neighbor whose property was spared from the pipeline worked as a senior manager overseeing power plants for a Southern Co. subsidiary. “I think anybody with a little bit of sense puts it together … why they deviate this thing around, especially around this one property owner who is a pretty high up executive at the Southern Co. SNG denied that Lane received special treatment.