Dominion withdraws landowner lawsuits to will start process again

Dominion Transmission Inc. is withdrawing lawsuits against 116 landowners who had refused access to their properties to survey the route of a proposed pipeline from West Virginia to the southeastern coast of Virginia and North Carolina.

And then the company, as part of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, will start the process over.

The pipeline consortium, formed in September, said yesterday that it will resend notices to landowners notified by Dominion last spring and summer that it planned to come onto their properties to survey.

At the same time, the pipeline is withdrawing lawsuits to enforce a 2004 state law that allows natural gas companies to come onto private property without the owner's consent to survey.

"If the landowners do not allow surveys once they are properly notified by [the Atlantic Coast Pipeline], the company may start legal proceedings again," Dominion spokesman Jim Norvelle said.

A ruling by a Suffolk Circuit Court judge late last month found the Atlantic Coast Pipeline had no standing to sue landowners under the state law because the notice had come from Dominion Transmission.

In addition to the survey law, opponents are angry about the use of eminent domain to take property if the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission grants a certificate of public need for the project.

Edited from various sources by Elizabeth Corner

Sources: Daily Progress, Roanoke

Read the article online at: https://www.worldpipelines.com/business-news/08042015/dominion-withdraws-landowner-lawsuits-will-start-again/