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northeastern Ohio | When we were fighting with the pipeline company, here is what we did:
Soil samples were taken before and after the project. We also pulled samples from the easement and compared to areas adjacent to the easement. Yield maps from before and after.
The hard part is that you have to prove damage. You can use the soil test to prove the loss of nutrients, but in you case those nutrients were just moved to another part of your field and not really "lost". In my case, they buried a lot of the topsoil, so it was there but out of reach of the crop. Yield loss is probably going to be the best indicator, but you don't have that info until it happens. And in a drought year, the loss will be higher than in a wet year.
They will have better lawyers than you and will try to delay and minimize. And a lot of easement agreements pay future damages in advance as part of the compensation, so you may be out of luck. I was able to get some compensation for damages that were out of the easement area (they changed the course of water during construction and that caused major erosion outside of the easement, which was not covered in the "advance damages".) Good luck. | |
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Damages from pipeline
