Protecting Peters Mountain and Appalachian Trail (AT)
From an Article by Laurence Hammack, Roanoke Times, March 13, 2018
UNION, W.Va. — A judge said Tuesday he will grant an injunction to prevent two protesters from sitting in trees, where for the past two weeks they have complicated plans to build a natural gas pipeline.
But after half a day of testimony in Monroe County Circuit Court, there was no clear picture of how the tree-sitters will be removed.
“We don’t have the resources to do anything to get these people out of the trees,” Judge Robert Irons told attorneys for Mountain Valley Pipeline, who sought the preliminary injunction. “That’s on you.” Irons said he was reluctant to have the county sheriff’s office get involved in what is a civil matter.
However, he agreed to set a bond of $10,000, which Mountain Valley will post to cover the expenses incurred by the tricky question of how to extract two pipeline protesters from their perches in tree stands about 60 feet off the ground.
The tree -sitters occupy a spot along the pipeline’s planned route across Peters Mountain, preventing tree cutting in what would be the first phase of building a 303-mile pipeline through West Virginia and Southwest Virginia.
Robert Cooper, who is managing the project as Mountain Valley’s senior vice president of engineering and construction, testified that chainsaw crews have cut trees on either side of the protesters, but can get no closer.
“If we did it would injure the people in the trees and possibly the workers on the ground,” he said from the witness stand of a courtroom packed with pipeline opponents.
Located on steep terrain near where the pipeline would cross under the Appalachian Trail in the Jefferson National Forest, the two occupied trees have been lashed to other trees with rope in an effort to further foil Mountain Valley’s plans.
If the company has a plan to deal with the situation, it has not shared it publicly.
It appears that the U.S. Forest Service will take the lead in enforcing the injunction that Irons said he will soon grant, according to Monroe County Sheriff Ken Hedrick.
Hedrick said the sheriff’s office would assist in the operation if asked to. But he said he had no information on what the forest service planned to do — or when that might happen. “It looks like we’re in a little bit of limbo,” he said, referring to Iron’s statement that he would not grant a final order until Mountain Valley submits some additional paperwork.
More documentation is needed to show that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the lead authority over the pipeline project, has granted Mountain Valley permission to cut trees in the spot where the tree -sitters are sitting.
A letter from FERC introduced as evidence Tuesday allowed tree cutting in Giles and Montgomery County, but made no specific mention of Monroe County (West Virginia). “You may not have authorization to cut trees in West Virginia,” Irons said. “If it’s in Virginia, I have no jurisdiction over those trees.”
Nicolle Bagnell, a Pittsburgh attorney who represents Mountain Valley, told the judge she has additional documents from FERC that make it clear that tree cutting is allowed throughout the national forest, including Monroe County. Bagnell promised to submit the records within 24 hours. Once that happens, Irons said, he would grant the injunction.
“I think they are entitled to the relief they’re seeking today,” he said of a company that has received approval from FERC, the forest service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to run the pipeline through about 3.5 miles of national forestland.
Mountain Valley had asked for an injunction against Appalachians Against Pipelines, a group that has been posting updates on the tree -sitters to its Facebook page, and seven individuals.
One is Ashley Brown, who said during a cellphone interview with The Roanoke Times that she is sitting in one of the trees. Another is Luca Connolly. The other five are unknown to Mountain Valley and are identified in court papers as John Does 1 through 5.
None of the defendants — who say the pipeline would cause severe environmental damage — appeared in court Tuesday. Only one of them, Connolly, was represented by an attorney.
William DePaulo, a Lewisburg lawyer, raised a number of questions — including whether the protesters had received proper notification of the hearing. Under normal situations, service is accomplished when someone is handed a summons to appear in court.
A security officer for Mountain Valley testified that he and others made the trip up Peters Mountain to serve the court papers, but that the protesters refused to identify themselves.
One of the protesters “scurried back under a tent” that had been pitched on one of two wooden platforms hanging from the trees, Ralph Wright of Global Security testified. Wright said the officers ended up reading the papers aloud to the anonymous protesters and then taped copies to nearby tree trunks.
That was not enough, DePaulo argued — leading Iron to ask: Just what do you do when the person to be served is up a tree? “I would say you’re up a tree, too,” DePaulo replied.
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