eminent domain
Will property owners who lost land to scuttled Atlantic Coast Pipeline get it back?
Advocates cry foul as future of thousands of easements in North Carolina and Virginia remains uncertain Dominion Energy laid claim to 3,100 tracts of private land along the Atlantic Coast Pipeline route, including hundreds in North Carolina, but the company is not immediately returning that acreage to property owners, even though the project has been cancelled.
Democratic state lawmakers ask FERC to temporarily stop MVP Southgate from using eminent domain — commission agrees
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has agreed to suspend MVP Southgate’s ability to use eminent domain for its natural gas pipeline project in North Carolina, at least temporarily, according to public documents. The 75-mile MVP Southgate project would start in Virginia, where it would connect with the main MVP pipeline, and enter North Carolina in […]
Federal judge to Dominion: No eminent domain for at least 90 days
US District Court Judge Terence Boyle has extended a three-month stay in an eminent domain case related to the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. In a status conference last Thursday, Boyle ruled that Dominion could not seize 11 acres belonging to Marvin Winstead Jr., of Nash County until at least May 31. Winstead has refused to allow ACP […]
BREAKING: Federal judge rules in favor of two landowners in Atlantic Coast Pipeline case
Marvin Winstead Jr.’s pine tree will survive another day. US District Court Judge Terence Boyle ruled today that Winstead and fellow defendant Ron Locke do not have to allow Atlantic Coast Pipeline contractors on their property to begin tree-cutting — at least for now. Earlier this week in Elizabeth City, Judge Boyle heard arguments from […]
Sen. Cook complains about politics trumping science, then votes for leachate bill, backed by no science
The Senate agriculture and environment committee introduced a blizzard of last-minute, controversial amendments to a bill this morning — including one that state regulators had not even reviewed. The NC Department of Environmental Quality “still has issues with” the Senate version of House Bill 56, said Andy Miller, DEQ’s legislative director. One Senate amendment would strike […]
State right to “take” property under the Map Act back at the Supreme Court
The state Supreme Court is hearing argument this morning in a case challenging the Department of Transportation’s right to control land use in areas where it intends to build roads, as set forth in the decades-old Map Act. Pursuant to that Act, the DOT can file a map with the local register of deeds identifying […]
Help from the high court on roadway takings
A decision in one of the first cases heard by the U.S. Supreme Court this term may help thousands of North Carolina property owners whose land has been tied up by proposed but delayed Department of Transportation road projects — some for more than a decade — recover the damages they say the DOT owes […]