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February 11th, 2016
The special interest agendas that have swept through the West Virginia Senate and House of Delegates show no end in sight. The oil and gas industry has been at the forefront of these efforts, mainly in its attempts to legislate the taking of property interests and rights through proposed forced pooling and forced lease integration bills. Most people now understand that the idea of forced pooling and forced leasing is to make individuals and mineral interest owners who may not want to enter into an oil and gas lease, for any reason ranging from poor lease terms to principles, enter into a lease without their approval. New reports this past week demonstrate that Delegate Woody Ireland, R-Ritchie County, is again pushing the forced pooling legislation through the Legislature. News articles have disclosed that Ireland owns significant oil and gas mineral interests and at least six new gas wells are planned on Ireland’s property. As much as 20 percent of Ireland’s income has come from oil and gas exploration and development since 2011.
Our state has learned little from the errors of our past. For decades King Coal ran roughshod over our workers and property owners. Now, as we are poised to again step to the forefront of energy production, we seem to be ready to bow down to the special interests who want nothing more than to take our natural resources, turn a profit and head out of town with little to no regard for our local workers and lands. We should all be concerned that private industry is fighting for the right to take our lands and property interests for pipelines and profit with little to no concern for our individuals and the families that have lived in these mountains and valleys for generations. For most West Virginians, our land is our biggest and sometimes only asset. Lands have been handed down for generations of families. That family legacy is now facing an attack unlike any other. Are we going to stand by and permit large out-of-state corporations to dictate to us what our property is worth and who can come onto our land? If forced pooling is unavoidable, we need to fight to allow complete surface protections for those force into production leases and to create a system which really does result in fair market value lease deals that don’t include provisions such as forced arbitration.
In addition to forced pooling legislation, bills are being proposed to take away one of the few tools that landowners have against the massive industrialization of our rural communities. I have met with and represent dozens of individuals who have saved their money and built or remodeled their dream homes only to have oil and gas well sites and massive processing and production facilities pop up in their back yards without any warning. Many of these people don’t own the mineral rights associated with their properties have had absolutely no say as to whether or not facilities will be built next to them. Worse yet, the companies building these facilities hide the proposed operations from the local community until the last possible moment. These facilities create tremendous air emissions, light pollution and sound disturbances often 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Hardworking families are kept up all hours of the night. Husbands working shift work can barely make it through their shifts, kids are up all night before school the next day and homemakers cannot keep up with the extra dust and debris covering and entering their homes. One of the few tools these people had and their disposal was the threat of nuisance lawsuits. These cases have allowed aggrieved property owners to seek compensation for the harms they have experienced as a result of having massive industrial plants dropped down beside them.
A bill has been sponsored by local Ohio County Senator Ryan Ferns, however, which will seek to tremendously limit the ability of hardworking property owners to fight back. The bill would seek to require actual property or physical personal injury to support a nuisance claim. Furthermore, the new bill would essentially provide that any business operating under the context of a permit, such as oil and gas drilling permits, would not face liability for nuisance actions unless that business was violating a statute, regulation, permit, license or court order. The people that stand to lose the most in these situations are the citizens of our state that live in rural communities, do not own their mineral rights, and have not consulted a mineral rights attorney. These rural communities don’t have sound ordinances; they don’t have work hour restrictions. The people in these communities have little to no standing to dispute the issuance of oil and gas well permits and most often don’t even get notice that such permits are even being filed. Couple that with environmental and regulatory inspector units that are tremendously overworked and understaffed and the tort of private nuisance in the context of the oil and gas industry will be effectively gutted. The people who live near these gas facilities did not ask for the tremendous disruptions and stress that they face. They did not ask for their property values to be nearly wiped away. They live in fear of explosions and catastrophic failures which may injure their families or destroy their property. Most of these people have nowhere else to go and now they could not sell their land even if they wanted to.
Sadly, once again, big business has come forward to dictate the terms of how we live our lives and what we have to put up with so it can profit. West Virginians need to stand up and let our representatives know that these actions are wrong. We cannot continue to bow down to the profit driven desires of out of state corporations who do not care about us or our state. If those representatives don’t listen, they don’t need our support at the ballot box.
