Dispute rages over pipeline Entrenched sides try to work out argument

LIMA — Chad Griggy began breeding koi in his basement in 2009. As demand grew for the ornamental fish, so did the complications.

Griggy began to build koi ponds and expand his breeding operation on five acres of land he owns on Sugar Creek Road, expecting to keep expanding over the coming years. What he didn’t expect when he started to expand was a knock on his door from Buckeye Pipeline.

The company has pipeline under part of Griggy’s land, and it didn’t take kindly to his digging a fence or building a structure within 25 feet of one side of the pipeline.

Now, Buckeye and Griggy and his wife Helina are entrenched in a “dispute” about the land, the greenhouse Griggy has near the pipeline and what the next step is.

The troubles between Sugar Creek Fishery and Buckeye Pipeline can be traced back to 2010, and then, all the way back to March 1946.

In 1946, previous owners of the land and the pipeline company, which has since changed names, signed an agreement saying the owners granted the company the right to “lay, maintain, operate, repair, replace and remove a pipeline and all necessary fixtures, equipment and appurtenances thereto, over through and across the following described lands.”

The conflict seems to arise when the pipeline gets in the way of Griggy’s business and Griggy’s business gets in the way of repairing the pipeline.

The two parties seem to be at a stalemate as they wait on a quote from a contractor on how much it will cost to relocate the greenhouse currently in violation of the easement.

Meanwhile, the Griggys worry about what will happen to the fish in the greenhouse this winter.

Koi can survive outside in the cold, but the Griggys are diversifying their company and have started to breed tilapia, a species that must stay at 58 degrees or above to survive.

Now, the plan is to move the fish inside the building, where there is limited space, as a stop-gap. But the Griggys can’t go on like that another year, so they’re hoping the dispute is worked out.

So is Martin White, district right of way agent at Buckeye Partners, L.P.

THE OPTIONS

As the two parties work to settle the dispute, White said the pipeline company is considering a few options.

One is that the company pays the cost for the Griggys to move the greenhouse to another location where it won’t conflict with the pipeline. This option is where the contractors and quotes come in.

Griggy is agreeable to this option and said he told the company he will work with them if they move it.

But when Griggy sought out contractor’s quotes, he said White declined them, and the Griggys can’t afford to pay for the relocation.

White said another option is that it’s just moved. Whether Griggy pays for the structure to be moved, it’s just taken down and doesn’t get replaced, “whatever is satisfactory to … the easement,” he said.

A third option is a lawsuit, which Buckeye has threatened. This year, the company sent a complaint to the Griggys, stating years and multiple instances of their easement rights being ignored.

Though the other issues, including Griggy building a fence over the pipeline, have been resolved, the dispute over the greenhouse has been going on since July, Griggy said. Since there’s no sign of it getting fixed before winter, the Griggys are trying to work with what they have until the spring, but they’re not happy about it.

“He doesn’t care about me and my business,” Griggy said of White. “Now we’re set back a whole year.”

The Griggys have already lost $30,000 in tilapia, as they stopped building the greenhouse in July when they were contacted by Buckeye about it.

Though the Griggys don’t have faith in Buckeye, White said the company tries to “accommodate land owner’s use of his or her property as best we can up unto the extent it interferes with our rights.”

Still, Griggy disagrees.

“They try to bully you,” he said.

AGRI- OR AQUA-CULTURE?

Part of the argument circles around what is considered agriculture and what isn’t, as the easement provides for agriculture to abut the pipeline.

Griggy argues his greenhouse counts as agriculture, and that is the way it is categorized by professionals.

White disagrees.

“He is calling aquaculture agriculture,” White said. “There’s a big difference between corn and his structure. We go through lots of corn fields.”

But Laura Tiu, director of the aquaculture extension program at Ohio State University’s South Centers, has a different idea of what agriculture is. She’s visited the farm, the largest koi fishery in Ohio, and said that what the Griggy’s do is agriculture.

“Raising fish is just like raising any other kind of livestock,” she said. “It’s on a farm in a farming condition.”

White admits the definition is not the real issue, the structure is. When it comes to that, each party has an ideal solution in mind, but they don’t seem to jive.

For White, he wants the company to have a “clear, identifiable access way that is provided by the easement that was granted in (1946).”

For Griggy, he wants the company to leave him and his wife alone and said, “It would have been nice to have it done a half a year ago.”

For his wife Helina, it’s a little simpler, at least on the surface.

“I just want to start our aquaponics,” she said.

 
 
 
 

Reach Danae King at 419-993-2092 or on Twitter @DanaeKing.

Dispute rages over pipeline Entrenched sides try to work out argument