![]() "I don't like to be threatened." A 'Comedy of Errors'įrustration with Vermont Gas has been bubbling up in homes and communities all along the proposed pipeline - which was divided into two phases for the purposes of obtaining permits. "It's incredibly stressful," said Selina Peyser. "Mom, don't be so angry," Melanie urged her mother. Over coffee in the sunny sitting room at the Peysers' stately Monkton home, the two women spoke about their dealings with Vermont Gas - Selina Peyser growing agitated, her daughter calming her. "This is not just an environmental issue, or a financial issue," said Melanie Peyser. But helping her mother - and protecting what she sees as her father's legacy - spurred Melanie Peyser on. And "even for me," said Peyser, who holds a law degree, the easement agreements and paperwork and right-of-way details constituted a labyrinthine mess. "I basically quit my job," said Peyser, who moved home in March. Her father, who'd handled the couple's legal affairs, died in 2008. During a visit to Vermont in December, she saw what was happening to her mother. Melanie Peyser, the once-reluctant activist, was living in California. Just a few days later, Peyser received a letter threatening eminent domain, the process by which the government seizes private land for public use while providing "just compensation." In a telephone message, a "land agent" - tasked with brokering a deal that would allow Vermont Gas to cross her property - warned Peyser he needed to hear from her soon or Vermont Gas would begin legal proceedings. The pipeline will cut through 222 parcels on its journey from Chittenden County to Middlebury - the first leg of a distribution network Vermont Gas hopes to extend as far south as Rutland. Turned out, the Peyser property was in the path of a new pipeline - this one the 43-mile Addison-Rutland Natural Gas transmission line, which earned a stamp of approval from Vermont's Public Service Board in late December. ![]() This winter, nearly three decades after the last pipeline project, Selina Peyser found herself fielding phone calls from a representative of the Canadian-owned utility Vermont Gas Systems. History is repeating itself at the Peyser house. "To be subtitled, of course: Why Even Having the Governor on Your Side Doesn't Always Help." "Someday it may serve as a business-school case study: How Not to Win Friends While Trying to Build a Pipeline," Susan Levine wrote in a 1989 Philadelphia Inquirer story about the conflict. It would have cut through the Peysers' property in Monkton and stretched some 340 miles through Vermont. My husband worked incredibly hard."įred Peyser was instrumental in blocking an underground pipeline proposed in the 1980s to bring natural gas into New England from Canada. " I wasn't mortified!" her 79-year-old mother, Selina Peyser, chimed in. "It was mortifying," recalled Peyser, now 46 she just wanted to hit the midway. Her job? Handing out leaflets and playing a VHS tape on a loop portraying footage of gas pipeline explosions. Melanie Peyser was a teenager when her father, Fred, insisted she work a booth at the Addison County Fair and Field Days.
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