"An appeals court has upheld the “take first, pay later” approach to building the Mountain Valley Pipeline, in which the company condemned private property in the project’s path before paying opposing landowners for their losses.

The ruling Tuesday by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was a blow to pipeline foes, who have long decried the use of eminent domain to take parts of family farms and rural homeplaces to make way for a 303-mile natural gas pipeline.

In their appeal, the landowners did not contest the laws that allowed Mountain Valley to obtain forced easements through nearly 300 parcels in Southwest Virginia."

Laurence Hammack reports for the Roanoke Times February 5, 2019. [2]