Fast Company discusses how pipeline companies are still trying to take people’s land—even during a pandemic. Using eminent domain, pipeline firms have broad authority to build through private property. The coronavirus hasn’t slowed them down.
Pipeline giant Kinder Morgan is cutting a 400-mile line across the middle of Texas, digging up vast swaths of private land for its planned Permian Highway Pipeline. The project is ceaseless, continuing through the coronavirus pandemic. Landowner Heath Frantzen says that dozens of workers have shown up to his ranch in Fredericksburg, even as public health officials urged people to stay at home.
“There weren’t wearing masks. They weren’t wearing gloves. They weren’t practicing social distancing,” he says. Frantzen believes the workers pose a danger to him and his 85-year-old father, whom he cares for. While the laborers are confined to the pipeline’s path, he worries they could spread the coronavirus by touching fence railings or gates that he might later handle.