Constructing a pipeline is getting to be quite a challenge these days. While hundreds of Native Americans are protesting the building of the Dakota Access oil pipeline in North Dakota, landowners in West Virginia are fighting a natural gas pipeline developer.
And they’ve won a West Virginia Supreme court ruling that the developer will not be allowed to survey landowners’ property without their permission. The court upheld a lower court ruling made in August 2015 against Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC. The company wants to build a 300 mile pipeline to transport natural gas from Wetzel County, West Virginia to another pipeline in Pittsylvania County, Virginia.
The company appealed the lower court ruling, claiming the survey work would not be invasive.