As if the proposed Keystone XL pipeline across America and the fracking disasters above the Marcellus Shale weren't enough for the people and land of this country to tolerate, there is more bad news. Large corporations have proposed pipelines and power lines which they would like to extend across the landscape, and even across your yard.
Closest to home here, one company is seeking to use an already laid pipeline, reverse the direction of its flow, and send Canadian tar sands through it from Montreal to Portland, Maine. Of course the trouble is that while the pipeline already exists, tar sands are full of, well, sands, meaning that the new river of petroleum in the raw would be full of abrasive rock, scratching at the sides of the pipeline, wearing it down and bringing it ever closer to springing a leak. Of course, while they would love to use the pipeline, the company has not sought to reinforce it.
Equally close to home is again another Canadian company, Hydro-Quebec, which is pursuing a massive land grab across beautiful stretches of northern New England so that it may bring its electricity from Quebec into the New England states. This unfortunately means dragging high tension wires across family farms and mountain tops. For those of you not familiar with the region, picture your desktop background or your fall time screen saver, then imagine it carved in two with massive high tension wires across your view. Not so relaxing now, is it?
Think I am being melodramatic here my fellow American? Do a quick Google search of "Hydro-Quebec" AND "Cree Nation".
At least in the case of Hydro-Quebec, the private corporation in question is offering to buy family farms one by one. In Vermont, Vermont Gas, another energy company, is looking to extend a gas pipeline through part of the state, under one of the nation's larger lakes, and into New York State. And how do they propose doing it? I mean, not the construction, but the legalities, the real estate transactions? Apparently, they are applying for a "Certificate of Public Good" so that they may use the state's sovereign power of eminent domain to seize people's property interests (namely the right of exclusive possession) and build their pipeline across their farm or their yard.
To avoid delving into a lengthy explanation wrought with legalese, I will simply put it in the following terms: if this private company obtains this certificate, wants to extend its property through your home, and you do not consent, tough shit. They apparently can apply to obtain that "right".
This is a touchy and indeed touching subject. Anyone who ever took a middle school civics class learned at some point about eminent domain, which is to say, taking for the public good. If the government needed to build a road for all of us to use, and your land were in the way, they could take what they needed, and pay you the value of what they took. Of course now even before this Vermont Gas story, the Supreme Court took an extremely broad view of the term "public use" (or was it public good?) when it ruled that the government could take private property and give it to a private corporation, as long as it deemed that seizure and redistribution to be for the greater good. Apparently your family isn't doing much good, so we'll need to take your land and give it to some real job creators!
Whether you are young or old, rich or poor, renter or owner, this all should have you very concerned. We are now living at a time when corporations are once again apparently able to apply for (or buy?) a governmental power, and use it take and destroy one's own family home. I say again since this all smacks of the rampant abuses of railroad companies some hundred-and-fifty or so years ago. So regardless of what your living situation is, stay informed and speak up for yourself and for your neighbors. If we do not work together to litigate in the court of public opinion, we have no hope. We already know what the Supreme Court has said about taking your home.
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