Donnie Peek is used to living with a pipeline.
One carrying propane already crossed his property in Fortson, a suburb of Columbus in western Georgia, when he bought the land in 1967. It’s where Peek and his wife raised their family, and he continued to buy adjacent property, expanding his footprint to more than 1,600 acres by the Chattahoochee River.
When Southern Natural Gas — a jointly owned venture of Kinder Morgan and energy giant Southern Co. — said in 2024 it planned to run part of a $3.5 billion gas pipeline along the same easements as the propane one, it made sense to Peek. After all, it would save a lot of time and money…