State Senator Charles Trump (R-15) favors the proposed Mountaineer Gas pipeline that will cut through Berkeley Springs and Morgan County and he supports the company’s use of eminent domain to get it done.
“It’s a resource we want here in the Eastern Panhandle,” Trump told Russell Mokhiber of This Week in Morgan County. “And we need it. U.S. Silica has been interested for a long time in natural gas. The primary motivator for starting it is the needs of the new Procter & Gamble plant that is coming to Martinsburg. There is already gas in Berkeley County provided, as I understand it, by the same company. That gas comes from Virginia. From talking with Berkeley County’s economic development officer, my understanding is that the Procter & Gamble facility is expected to use 100 percent of everything that company can provide from that existing infrastructure. And other customers will need gas as well.”
What about the use of eminent domain for private purposes?
“Eminent domain should be used only for public purposes,” Trump said. “But sometimes, those are delivered by private companies. Potomac Edison, Allegheny Energy are private companies. But they have eminent domain power, because they are utilities for public purposes. And I view gas lines in the same fashion.”
Would Trump consider restricting the use of eminent domain when it came to gas pipelines?
“What you have then is the opportunity of one person to obstruct something that may be for enormous public benefit,” Trump said. “We are well beyond the stage where you can say – I don’t want my neighbor to have electricity because I don’t want the line to go over my property.”
“I have heard that some of the land agents for this particular company have been less than pleasant to deal with,” Trump said. “That concerns me deeply. And I am going to demand a meeting with the company in Charleston and try to straighten some of that out.”