BOWLING GREEN — In a slam dunk for Ohio pipeline activists, the Bowling Green City Council rejected Spectra Energy’s request to build part of its NEXUS Gas Transmission pipeline on city-owned land by a 7-0 vote tonight.
The vote came one day after activists in North Dakota scored a major victory when the Army Corps of Engineers denied a permit for the construction of a key section of the 1,172-mile Dakota Access Pipeline just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. That project is a much different one, in that would transport oil — not natural gas — and was in close proximity to Native American land where protestors had demonstrated for months.
In Bowling Green, the city council was asked by Spectra to grant easement access to a portion of 29 acres of city-owned land several miles northwest of Bowling Green.
The request was made to accommodate plans for a 255-mile pipeline Spectra and other companies want to build between southern Ohio and southwest Ontario to move natural gas fracked from Ohio’s Marcellus and Utica shale. The land, on State Rt. 64 and King Road north of Haskins, Ohio, was acquired by Bowling Green in 2015.
Spectra offered $151,000, and was willing to follow existing utility easement where power lines exist.
Now, the company will likely either reroute that segment of its proposed pipeline, or seek to acquire the Bowling Green-owned land it wants through eminent domain.
The Bowling Green council rejected the offer to a standing-room only crowd so large the state fire marshal's office had about 30 people listen from another floor in the building, and another 30 listen from outside while standing in the cold.
One resident, Joe DeMare, a Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate in the most recent election, was escorted out of the meeting by security when he objected to Council President Mike Aspacher's decision to take a vote without more public comment. Only council members spoke.
More details coming in Tuesday's print edition of The Blade.
Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com, 419-724-6079, or via Twitter @ecowriterohio.
First Published December 6, 2016, 1:14 a.m.
