Written by Chris Hoffman   

On January 31, the Associated Press released a story that should make everyone in Central New York wake up in the middle of the night screaming.

Despite assurances to the contrary to northern Pennsylvania landowners, Central New York Oil and Gas Company LLC (CNYOG), a subsidiary of Inergy LP of Kansas City, MO, began eminent domain proceedings against about half of the 150 property owners along a 39-mile, $250 million natural gas pipeline that had been approved by the federal government just days earlier. The high-pressure, 30-inch steel pipeline is intended to connect interstate pipelines with CNYOG’s gas storage facility in southern New York.

Landowners claim in a lawsuit that CNYOG has refused to negotiate in good faith and is avoiding PA’s eminent domain rules after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) invested CNYOG with eminent domain power, which essentially eviscerates any power the landowners might have had. CNYOG is also offering significantly less money for properties than another pipeline company had paid to install a gathering line. In its eminent domain filings, CNYOG has valued 37 targeted properties at less than $311,000 in total – about $8,400 each.

In addition to determining that the pipeline would have no significant impact on the environment, FERC also relied on CNYOG’s assertion that there would be little need to resort to eminent domain because landowners were willingly negotiating with the company. It turns out that CNYOG had already prepared the eminent domain proceedings paperwork well before FERC granted approval for the pipeline. CNYOG also told landowners that all deals are off if any legal challenge ensued. CNYOG appears to have no interest in negotiating anything with landowners – not the route of the pipeline, not the location of access roads, and not the price they will pay landowners to use their land – $2 a foot.

In the meantime, Josh Fox, producer of the award-winning anti-fracking documentary “Gasland,” was arrested on February 1 in Washington DC for attempting to film a House Science Committee meeting on hydraulic fracturing, and an ABC News film crew was also denied access to the meeting. Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) moved to suspend the committee rules and allow Fox and ABC to film the hearing, but Republicans voted to table the motion.

So, let’s recap. We have a federal agency that sees no potential environmental harm from installing a 39-mile pipeline through mountainous pristine waterways, forest ecosystems, and private farmland. We have a gas company that tells landowners one thing and then does something entirely different behind their backs that will result in loss of property and environmental destruction. And we have the federal government in the form of the House of Representatives refusing to allow the press access to public business, and even going so far as to have a journalist arrested. In America this is happening!

The gas companies’ position is becoming increasingly transparent: do not get in our way because you will pay. One way or another, pipelines and drill pads and drill rigs and all the hideous ancillary paraphernalia and devastating ramifications that go hand in hand with this destructive industry shall soon be the new normal if the gas companies get their way.

I cannot think of a more obvious example of what is happening to what used to be known as American democracy. In 1932, Benito Mussolini wrote, "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

Eighty years later, it has happened – is happening – again. Corporate interests have become overwhelmingly enmeshed in government business, and government policy has become myopically geared to corporate mandates.

Will your farm or your home be the next target of eminent domain unleashed by the gas companies? Will you bankrupt your family trying to fight them, and end up losing anyway? Will you just roll over and slink away, give it all up, because the fight isn’t worth the cost?

Or will you join the larger fight to end corporate dominion over our lives and thus one day be able to tell your grandchildren that you were part of a grassroots effort that saved CNY from destruction by the gas companies?

We will all make this choice, willingly or begrudgingly. It begins now.