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Ron Doiron will quickly tell you he doesn't welcome pipeline surveyors or the thought of a 36-inch liquified natural gas pipeline running across his property on Pleasant Hill Road. He and his wife, Ruth, moved to this property for its beauty and peace, and he fears a pipeline would disrupt both.Pipeline crosses property owner
Friday, September 16, 2005 11:15 PM PDT
By Amy M. E. Fischer
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E-mail this articleA natural gas company released a map this week showing the proposed route of a controversial 36-inch pipeline that will run 35 miles from a liquified natural gas plant in Bradwood, Ore., under the Columbia River and across Cowlitz County.
"It's our best estimate of where the pipeline will run. It could change," said Gary Coppedge, Northern Star Natural Gas' vice president of permitting and development.
The map depicts a quarter-mile-wide corridor that Northern Star Natural Gas is attempting to survey to determine precisely where the pipe should go. The 35-mile pipeline, with a capacity of 1.5 billion cubic feet per day, would route through Clatsop, Columbia and Cowlitz counties and connect with the Williams Northwest pipeline system, a main north-south gas line in Western Washington. Northern Star would buy sections of land from property owners for the project.
Not all property owners on the tentative pipeline route are cooperating with the company's requests to allow surveyors on their land, however. Kelso resident Ron Doiron, who with his wife lives on 15 acres on Pleasant Hill Road, is among the holdouts.
"If they're gonna come on my property, they'd better come shooting because there's gonna be a war," Doiron, 72, said last month. "There's all kinds of open spaces. Why does it have to come through where people live?"
According to information Doiron received from NSNG representatives, the pipeline would run right through his workshop, which is close to his house. The news especially sickens him because he just finished paying off the property three months ago, and he and his wife had planned to live out their retirement here, he said.
"Now some jerk who wants to make a bunch of money wants to devalue my property," Doiron said. "Here I am now, in the mode of staying -- now I'm gonna have to load my damn guns."
The news that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has final approval of the pipeline route didn't seem to offer much comfort.
"Someone from outside of Cowlitz County who doesn't even know what's here is going to make a decision? That's insane," he spat.
Northern Star's project is one of four LNG terminals proposed for the lower Columbia. LNG is natural gas that is supercooled into a liquid state, shipped overseas in tankers, and then reheated and distributed as a gas through pipelines.
The new pipeline is necessary to keep natural gas affordable in the region when prices are steadily rising, he said. A year ago, natural gas cost about $6 per million cubic feet, he said. By Aug. 30, the price had increased to $11.40 for the same quantity, Coppedge said.
Before finalizing the pipeline route, Northern Star and FERC want to hear public comment about the map, Coppedge said Thursday.
Northern Star sent letters to 169 residents along the pipeline route in Washington, and letters to 77 Oregon residents, Coppedge said last month.
At least one area resident is not going down without a fight.
"I want the world to know that big business cannot come in and say we want your land ... and whether you like it, we're gonna take it," Doiron said.
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