Landowner Meets Survey Crews with Shotgun

This map shows the proposed route of Texas-based Energy Transfer’s proposed ET Rover natural gas pipeline. (Photo: Energy Transfer)

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Survey crews for Energy Transfer, which has chosen Genesee County as part of the route for its proposed $4.3 billion ET Rover pipeline, were met by an armed man Monday as tensions continue to mount between local residents and the Texas-based oil company.

Mike Austin of Mundy Township told MLive/The Flint Journal that he met the survey crew with a shotgun because he doesn’t want the pipeline going through his property or his neighbors’ properties.

The workers were attempting to survey land owned by an elderly neighbor of Austin and his wife, Jennifer, who say the energy company will have to produce a court order before workers are allowed to survey their 10.5-acre tract of land. The company reportedly surveyed the property from the public road.

“This could potentially contaminate water I drink and destroy wetlands,” Jennifer Austin said. The couple rely on well water and have established wetlands nearby, and the pipeline could make their land unsuitable for other uses.

“I pay taxes on that property and now I can’t use it,” Mike Austin said.

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Mundy Township Police Sgt. Tom Hosie said the township’s attorney will review the case before deciding if the Austins should charged.

The armed confrontation was the second Monday that resulted in a police call.

Tammy Merkel reported to the Genesee County Sheriff’s Department that survey crews were on her Atlas Township acreage, where she and her husband plan to build a house. The pipeline would go through the center of their 3.5-acre property.

“ET Rover doesn’t seem to be listening to me in the fact that I’m going to have a house on that property in less than six months,” Merkel said.

A representative for the company told MLive/The Flint Journal the company won’t survey at the landowner’s request.

However, “we do have, under Michigan Compiled Law, the right to enter, knock on the door and, if the landowner isn’t home and we’re following specs, we do have the right to enter,” ET Rover spokeswoman Vicki Granado said.

Without permission, the company can seek a court order.

The pipeline is still in the planning stages and won’t be filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission until January. It will cenable the flow of natural gas from processing plants and interconnections in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio to points of interconnection with Energy Transfer’s existing Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line and other Midwest pipeline interconnects near Defiance, Ohio.

In Michigan it runs through or near Lenawee, Washtenaw, Livingston, Shiawassee, Genesee, Oakland, Lapeer, Macomb and St. Clair counties, before ending near Sarnia, Ontario.