The Gavel outside the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio. (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal. Republish photo only with original article.)
The Ohio Supreme Court has rejected an effort to keep a natural gas pipeline from going through land in Lucas County.
The court heard an appeal from an Ohio Power Siting Board decision, in which the board granted a request to construct 3.7 miles of a proposed Ford Street Pipeline Project in Maumee, considered a “major utility facility,” using “a combination of private easements and public-road rights-of-way,” according to court documents.
The pipeline is being constructed by Columbia Gas of Ohio, Inc.
The owners of the land in the request, Yorktown Management, L.L.C., appealed to the supreme court saying the board “failed to consider and resolve safety and environmental concerns related to the pipeline’s siting in proximity to the western boundary of Yorktown’s property.”
Yorktown argued its due-process and private-property rights were violated in the board’s decision, and said it would “suffer irreparable financial harm” based on the forced closure of its commercial office building on the land, documents in the supreme court decision stated.
Columbia asked for an “accelerated application” with the power siting board, and the board’s staff released a “report of investigation,” which included staff analysis of the project’s “probable impacts on land use, safety, cultural resources, surface waters and threatened and endangered species.”
The board did not act on the accelerated application, according to court documents, but a date recommended in the staff report passed without action, the application was automatically approved via Ohio administrative code rules. A request for rehearing by Yorktown was denied, and Columbia urged “affirmance of the board’s order.”
The unanimous decision by the Ohio Supreme Court said Yorktown’s arguments “lack merit.”
Justice Melody Stewart, writing for the court, said the court can only reverse, vacate or modify a board order when the record shows the board’s order to be “unlawful or unreasonable.”
Additionally, the court said Yorktown “has not identified any evidence that the proposed pipeline in this case presents safety risks given its proximity to Yorktown’s property.”
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