Oregon Public Broadcasting

Property owners along a proposed natural gas pipeline in northwestern Oregon are suing the company involved because they believe its surveyors trespassed on their land. Rob Manning reports.

The Palomar company’s gas line would connect a potential liquefied natural gas terminal near Astoria with central Oregon and points south.

Completing the pipeline would require negotiating with landowners, or condemning land. But before any of that can happen, surveyors need the landowners’ permission to do environmental studies of their property.

But Shaw Spady, with Oregon Citizens Against the Pipeline, says some property owners are suing, because workers snuck onto their land without permission.

Shaw Spady: “The property owners who have instigated this action are the ones who said ‘no’ and found that Palomar people and representatives of them, their surveyors, were actually on their property, trespassing.”

The lawsuit asks the court to forbid the company’s workers from entering land without permission. It also asks that any information gathered through trespass be kept out of any official filing with federal energy regulators.