Eminent Domain is the term used for the ability of a governmental entity to authorize the confiscation of private lands for public use with the provision that the landowner is compensated for the fair value of the land. The legal term is “just compensation”. Traditionally, eminent domain has been reserved for public utilities, transportation such as highways and railways, parks, or public buildings that are used by all the residents. Over the past few decades, eminent domain has been broadened to include a more controversial concept called “economic development for the public good” that has allowed governmental entities to take properties by eminent domain so that private developers can build more expensive properties, allowing those companies to make higher profits and the governmental entities to collect greater property tax revenues. In these cases, the rights of both the government and for-profit private industry or corporations have trumped the rights of the original property owners.

Recently, by using the courts and/or lawmakers who introduce legislation such as HB 1475, gas and oil companies are attempting to broaden eminent domain to classify their laying of pipelines as “providing economic development for the public good” even though they may not provide economic development, and in some cases, even trigger negative economic impacts for the political entities that have to provide services they are not prepared for or cannot afford. More important, the natural gas pipelines potentially cause environmental and public health damage, community resources demands, and legal problems that cannot be construed as “for the public good”.

State lawmakers have no business enabling the “Big Energy” industry to trample the rights of private citizens to protect their own property from the bigger, more powerful private corporations such as gas pipeline companies.

Tell the Virginia House of Delegates to Vote NO on HB 1475, a bill that would benefit “Big Energy” at the expense of ordinary tax paying citizens. Listed below are some of the important negative features of HB 1475:

· would allow the confiscation of privately-owned property through eminent domain even if the reason the gas company takes the property is not for public use, but for corporate benefits.

· would allow destruction of privately- and publicly-owned natural resources for the benefit of gas companies and to the detriment of home and land owners.

· would put legislators in the position of protecting the fossil fuel industry over protecting taxpayers.

· would bar the Virginia State Corporation Commission from examining gas company revenue requirements or rate making issues when a gas company applies for an expansion plan.