by Nelson Harvey
It was a hot day in the summer of 2009, and Dow Rippy was out on his four-wheeler in western Colorado, checking on his cows.
As he drove, tracing the southern edge of his property, Rippy
followed the route of a gas pipeline that the Houston-based gas company,
SG Interests, was building across the ranch.
Dow and his wife, Kathy, owned about 1,900 acres of hilly oak brush
south of Silt, Colo., near the heart of Colorado’s gas patch. They had
acquired the land over 15 years, though Dow’s family had been ranching
in the area since they originally emigrated from Scotland in the late
1860s, after the Civil War.
In 2007, Dow signed a contract allowing SG Interests to build a
pipeline across his land. The agreement established a 30-foot-wide
corridor for the pipeline and required the company to repair fences and
slopes along its route. Yet as Dow reached the southeastern edge of his
ranch on that day in 2009, he noticed not only that a section of
pipeline had been left unburied; it also appeared to be well outside of
the boundary allowed in his contract.
Dow had always been a fierce defender of his property rights, and
this made him angry. He ordered SG pipeline workers to leave until he
had spoken to the company’s managers, and then he closed his gate,
locking their equipment inside.
Dow didn’t know it then, but that day marked the beginning of the end
of his ranching career. This past October, he put his ranch up for
auction to settle a court battle with SG Interests. He’d lost that
battle, and was ordered to pay the company more than $700,000 in
damages.
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
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1 comment:
And people want to have more oil and gas companies drill all over the country....well this is an example of what will be coming more and more.
Breaks my heart that it is all about money and power...I am a born a breed westerner and wish we could find more balance.
Regards.
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