Harper’s Magazine is running a photo essay in its current issue featuring a local farm family’s battle against the proposed Mountaineer Gas pipeline.
“The Kesecker family has been farming in Morgan County for seventy years,” the magazine reports, alongside four pictures of the Keseckers and their farm. “In the spring of 2016, a company called Mountaineer Gas offered them a small sum of money if they would allow the utility to lay part of a pipeline across their property. The family declined, and the company sued them. This summer, a court ruled that under eminent domain, Mountaineer had the right to lay the pipe. It will run through the fields that the Keseckers refer to as ‘God’s country.'”
In fact, the pipeline still has many hurdles to clear.
The battle against the pipeline has spread from the eastern panhandle of West Virginia to Maryland and beyond, with regional environmental groups calling on Maryland Larry Governor Hogan to put a halt to a TransCanada pipeline being proposed for just west of Hancock, Maryland.
If that TransCanada pipeline is defeated, there will be no fracked gas to transport through the proposed Mountaineer Gas pipeline and that West Virginia pipeline might never be built.
The photo essay was put together by local photographer and Hampshire County resident Lisa Elmaleh.