In response to pressure from landowners and Gov. Peter Shumlin, Vermont Gas Systems has agreed to temporarily stop pursuing legal action to secure rights-of-way along the route of the company’s Addison County pipeline.
The move comes after a vocal group of landowners spent months attending public meeting and staging public demonstrations such as a “knit-in” at Vermont Gas headquarters.
After Shumlin himself met with the 10 landowners last month, his chief of staff, Elizabeth Miller, followed up with them and the group came up with a set of requests.
“The governor supports the request of these landowners that VGS [Vermont Gas Systems] significantly improve its communications and work more constructively to resolve remaining land disputes,” Miller said in a letter to Vermont Gas Friday.
The administration also supports a landowner request that the company not pursue any eminent domain proceedings related to the pipeline until after March 2, 2015.
“We understand that there are points where public good for all of us supersedes private ownership,” Shumlin said Wednesday. “But let’s not use that unless we absolutely need to.”
Instead, Shumlin said Vermont Gas needs to work on addressing “some very legitimate concerns about process” regarding the way the company deals with landowners along the pipeline route.
Vermont Gas spokeswoman Beth Parent said Wednesday that the company has agreed to stop pursuing legal proceedings as a means of getting rights-of-way for the pipeline.
“Vermont Gas certainly agrees with this,” she said, “and we’re not planning to file any further eminent domain proceedings for the time being.”
Parent wouldn’t say whether the company was committed to waiting until March 2 to file any new legal cases.
“We really want to sit down with this group and go from there,” she said.
Parent said Vermont Gas officials still hope to resume pipeline construction in the spring and complete work on Phase I of the project in 2015.
