The company building a natural gas pipeline through a bucolic Bent Mountain property should be made to pay its owners $650,000 for their losses, a jury was told Monday.
Mountain Valley Pipeline used its legal power of eminent domain to take part of a 560-acre tract owned by the Terry family four years ago. How much it should now compensate the owners will be decided during a weeklong trial in Roanoke’s federal court.
The land is worth $2 million, according to Joe Sherman, a Norfolk attorney who represents Frank Terry and his brother and sister, John Coles Terry and Elizabeth Terry Reynolds.
Plowing a trench for the buried pipeline through a scenic stretch of forests, meadows and the headwaters of Bottom Creek would reduce the property’s value by about a third, Sherman said during opening statements Monday.
“The pipeline corridor will run though this land forever,” he told the jury. “The Terrys can’t afford to compromise, and you shouldn’t either.”
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Mountain Valley contends that just compensation — or the difference between the fair market value of the land before and after it was condemned for the pipeline — is closer to $150,000.
Dueling testimony between appraisers for each side is expected at the trial, which could lead to the second jury verdict in a just compensation case involving the deeply divisive infrastructure project.
Last May, a jury awarded $430,000 to a Bent Mountain couple who described how their dream home — a “slice of heaven” they spent years nurturing — had been forever changed by the pipeline.
Less than a dozen compensation cases remain pending in U.S. District Court in Roanoke. In 2017, Mountain Valley sued the owners of about 300 parcels who refused to sell their land, using its muscle of eminent domain to take what it needed for a 303-mile pipeline that will pass through the New River and Roanoke valleys.
Most of the cases have been settled, either through voluntary agreements or after a judge’s ruling on evidentiary issues forced a resolution. About 85% of the landowners in the pipeline’s path agreed to sell to Mountain Valley and were not sued, the company says.
The Terry property has already been a battleground in the pipeline war.
Cole Terry’s wife and daughter, Theresa “Red” Terry and Theresa Minor Terry, spent more than a month camped in tree stands in effort to stop tree cutting when work reached Bent Mountain in the spring of 2018.
More recently, opponents squared off with construction crews when blasting began on the Terry property last summer.
Passed down through seven generations, the land includes a historic home built in 1890 and the headwaters of Bottom Creek, classified as a Tier III waterbody, the highest quality in Virginia.
About a half-mile of the pipeline will pass through the parcel. Although Mountain Valley obtained an easement of about 8 acres, its impact on their entire tract is taken into account by appraisers.
Other potential uses, which in the past have included discussions for a wind farm at the top of Bent Mountain, must be considered in determining a fair market value, Sherman said.
Over the years, eminent domain has traditionally been used for government projects to take private land for a public good, such as the construction of highways.
The Natural Gas Act gives private companies like Mountain Valley the authority to condemn land for pipelines when there is a determination of public necessity, which the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission found in 2017.
Following FERC approval, U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Dillon granted Mountain Valley immediate possession of the land it sought in early 2018. In what critics call a “take first, pay later” practice, the issue of compensating landowners was decided in separate proceedings that followed.
The land subject to this week’s trial is the home of Frank Terry, who owns it jointly with his brother and sister. Coles Terry and Elizabeth Reynolds, who own other parcels nearby, also had portions of their property taken by eminent domain and are scheduled for just compensation trials later this year.
