Jury awards rural Virginia couple $430,000 for land taken by Mountain Valley Pipeline; could invite similar lawsuits

On Friday a jury determined that Mountain Valley Pipeline developers under-compensated a rural Virginia couple for land seized through eminent domain, and ordered the company to pay them $430,000.

James and Kathy Chandler didn't want to sell the 8.6-acre swath of land, half a mile long and 125 feet wide, which passes about 500 feet from the custom-built home on their 111-acre property on Bent Mountain. But when they refused, developers forced the sale through eminent domain in 2018 and paid them $89,343, Laurence Hammack reports for The Roanoke Times in Virginia.

During the trial, the Chandlers testified about how they had spent years looking for the perfect piece of land, and called their property a "slice of heaven," Hammack reports. Though the pipeline, now under construction, will be buried, it will occupy a cleared right-of-way through the forest on their land that will always serve as a "visual reminder," James Chandler testified. "Nothing will be normal."

The five energy companies developing the pipeline struck voluntary land-purchase agreements with about 85% of the landowners along the pipeline's proposed path. "In October 2017 — about two weeks after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission found there was a public need for the natural gas that will be pumped through the pipeline at high pressure — Mountain Valley sued the owners of about 300 parcels in Virginia who had refused to sell," Hammack reports. "Mountain Valley often makes lowball offers while using its eminent domain authority as leverage over landowners, according to Mark Jarrell of Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights, an anti-pipeline coalition."