Donnie Peek, a 79-year-old Muscogee County landowner, filed a formal petition with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on August 28 to challenge the routing of the Southern System Expansion 4 pipeline. The move targets a sudden detour that sends 2.5 miles of new infrastructure across his 1,600-acre estate, a route change Peek argues was designed to spare the home of Chris Lane, a 25-year veteran of Southern Co. The original plan utilized an existing utility easement crossing four residential properties, a standard industry practice to minimize costs and legal friction.
The revised plans, released earlier this year, abandon that shared path. Instead, the pipeline makes a sharp turn north to completely avoid Lane's property, adding approximately 1,400 feet of pipe and shifting the burden exclusively onto Peek's land. Peek, who bought his initial 150 acres in 1967, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the shift "smells" of favoritism. "I think anybody with a little bit of sense puts it together … why they deviate this thing around, especially around this one property owner who is a pretty high up executive at the Southern Co," he said.
Southern Natural Gas, a joint venture between Kinder Morgan and Southern Co., denied any special treatment. In a statement, the company claimed the new route "represents the option that best balances overall landowner impacts with the project's operational needs" by reducing the number of affected properties from four to one. They asserted there is "no policy that exempts Southern Co. employees from this process." However, emails obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution show Lane personally proposed two alternative routes to Kinder Morgan, including one using a transmission line near an Alabama power plant. Peek claims he was excluded from these discussions while his land was being sacrificed.
Negotiations collapsed after SNG offered Peek $300,000 for additional easement rights, a sum he rejected. "It's not about the money, it's just the fact that one person was involved getting it moved on my property instead of getting it to pass by his house," Peek stated. The dispute now rests with FERC, which must determine whether the original route approval stands or if the detour was an irregularity in the approval of the 7,600-mile interstate gas network.