Utah leaders vote to oppose pipeline from Wyoming to Oregon

4/13/2008,

The Associated Press

LOGAN, Utah (AP) — Cache County commissioners are opposing a leg of a 680-mile pipeline that would deliver natural gas from Wyoming to Oregon.

After crossing the Cache National Forest, ranchers say the pipeline could damage and devalue their land and they won't get enough compensation for it.

The company "basically said, 'We're not gonna honor ag protection areas; we're not gonna honor state law; we'll just use federal law, and if we have to condemn, we'll condemn,'" said Cache County Executive Lynn Lemon.

The Cache County Council unanimously voiced its opposition last week.

Houston-based El Paso Corp. and partners want to build the Ruby Pipeline from Opal, Wyo. — a hub for major gas pipelines 15 miles east of Kemmerer, Wyo. — to Malin, Ore., near California's northern border. It's designed to move 1.2 billion cubic feet of gas a day with the capability of expanding to 2 billion cubic feet.

"It appears to us that Ruby doesn't really care about the private individual landowners," Lemon said.

An El Paso official denied Lemon's version of a meeting held March 18.

"Our pipeline project team does not go into a discussion with county officials and arbitrarily push a pipeline down the throat of any community," company spokesman Richard Wheatley told The Associated Press on Sunday. "We're very open and transparent."

El Paso is a year away from filing for approval of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and is dealing with federal land regulators.

The Bureau of Land Management doesn't want the Ruby pipeline to take a northerly route through roadless forests in Idaho, Wheatley said.

El Paso would offer Cache County ranchers compensation for the buried pipeline. In a dispute, the company could use the power of federal condemnation for an easement.

"We'll continue to refine the route and listen to the concerns of the stakeholders from Utah to Oregon," Wheatley said Sunday.

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Information from: The Herald Journal, http://www.hjnews.com 

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