Local farmers battle with companies building Stonewall Gas Gathering Pipeline over crop damage
FrackCheckWV
WV Property Owners are Standing Their Ground
From an Article by Michael Barrick, Appalachian Chronicle, July 14, 2015
Local farmers battle with companies building Stonewall Gas Gathering Pipeline over crop damage; WV DEP issues Notice of Violation to company for violations nearby, continues investigation of incident impacting farm
Big Isaac, WV – Justin McClain is a farmer. At 35, it is all he has ever done in this small Doddridge County community since before he was a teenager. It is also all he plans to ever do. However, recent damage he says was caused to his crops by the company building the Stonewall Gas Gathering pipeline has him questioning if he will be able to keep his farm going. It also has him and his father, Robert, concerned about the farm’s future if the larger and longer Mountain Valley Pipeline is approved, and has left them both with a bitter taste about the industry as they have tried to get the companies building the 55-mile Stonewall Pipeline Project to compensate them for the loss of Justin’s spring hay crop.
To date, the companies have not admitted responsibility for the damages to his crops. Indeed, they’ve insisted that the McClain’s sign a Release and Waiver that states that the companies are not responsible. In fact, the McClains were given a different version of the Release and Waiver than an attorney in Charleston received – and approved – on their behalf. The two men have also had several conversations on their property with several different corporate representatives, the last ones being told by the elder McClain to leave. “They called Justin a liar. That was enough for me. I told those boys to leave, that they were trespassing.” Justin added, “They took that paper, put it in front of our faces and told us we had to sign it. It was like they were trying to jam it down our throats."
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The dispute between the McClains and SGG began after a heavy rain on the evening of June 20th. Just about 2,000 feet upstream from the McClain farm, Precision Pipeline, a subcontractor for SGG, was preparing to lay a 36” pipeline on a steep hillside directly above Meathouse Fork, near Isaac Creek. Meathouse Fork is a tributary of Middle Island Creek, the longest creek in the United States. ...
Following the rain, a hayfield that would produce approximately 500 bales of hay for Justin’s cattle was flooded. When the waters receded, the McClains found the hay to be unusable. ...
... Robert recalled, “We went up a week before this happened. We talked to a guy from Wisconsin and told him we were concerned about the threat to the valley from runoff.” Robert said the man told him, “If it comes down that valley, if anything happens, we’ll stand good for it. Now go on and don’t worry about it.”
Yet, they’re still waiting. Robert said that after the first visits by company officials, they were being told a different story. “They called back and said they wouldn’t buy the hay. It was an act of God, that it could happen anywhere. He said they had rain gauges all along the line and that it had rained three-and-a-half inches in 15 minutes. I told him we were out there and it could not possibly have rained that much in that amount of time.” It was then, he said, that he began to not trust them. Robert, who has lived on the land since the late 1940s, added, “That would have been the most rain we have ever seen in this valley.”
Conflicting Release and Waiver documents
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