Tim,

I'm out of the line of fire on this line thank goodness. My comments on plowing in were mainly directed at the miserable experience I had crossing a fiber optic phone line and the total lack of help or assistance we got from the locator on a correct depth. I'd try and make them dig an open trench even if the wire was only as big as a human hair. Plowed in lines have always caused headaches here whether fiber optic or regular phone lines. Always some subcontractor who could care less about anything other than getting the daily allotment of feet in the ground.

I also read on their site something about diminishing payments over a few years to compensate for cropland damage from installation. My Dad worked for a utility company and often told of the time they had to literally drag a line truck back onto a right of away with a dozer through a crop field in really muddy conditions. He said you could see those tracks for 15 years in the way the crops grew after that kind of destruction to the soil structure. They padi the farmer for the actual crop damage but said he really ended up gettingt he short end of the deal in succeding years yield reductions. I'd guess a pipeline would be no different and some small declining yearly payment would not come close to covering the actual loss in yields.

Here is a fine example of the local phone company's plowed in lines and my tile. They ripped through a 24" main after it was marked and pointed out to them hwere it was. They tried to patch it but left a 3" gap which promptly sucked in. The line plowed in through the middle of the tile did not show up until many years later. There was no help on fixing it either. I had to dig several feet in each direction to get enough slack to fix my tile and get the line above it.

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