Pipeline surveyors who were ordered off a Screven County farm over the weekend turned themselves in to the sheriff’s office in Sylvania on Wednesday afternoon.
The three men each posted bond on the charge of criminal trespass and were quickly released, said Screven County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Brett Dickerson.
Bond was $1,000 apiece, and the charges are misdemeanors, Dickerson said.
On Saturday, Emmett Horn, Darrell Alexander and Barry Kilgore of SGC Engineering LLC — the survey company hired by pipeline giant Kinder Morgan — were surveying for the Palmetto Pipeline. If approved, the pipeline will carry gasoline through 210 miles of Georgia. The surveyors had traveled 1.7 miles into the property before a Millhaven Company LLC employee spotted their truck. Millhaven operates a 20,000-plus acre property planted in row crops and timber. Executives there had directed Kinder Morgan not to enter the property.
Screven County Sheriff Mike Kile said he made the decision to issue the warrant.
“Deputies found these three men on property that did not belong to them,” Dickerson said. “From what I understand, the company they work for had been officially warned they did not want any surveyors on their property.”
The surveyors, all out-of-state residents, told deputies they were following their company’s directives and surveying based on GPS coordinates they were provided. Warned they could be charged with criminal trespass, the supervisor said they had finished but needed to retrieve equipment.
The farm is owned by the family of Billy Morris, chairman and CEO of Morris Communications, owner of the Savannah Morning News.
Kinder Morgan plans to spend more than $1 billion on the 16-inch diameter steel pipeline that would bring gasoline, ethanol and diesel from the Gulf Coast and from South Carolina to North Augusta, S.C., Savannah and Jacksonville.
The pipeline requires a 50-foot permanent easement along a proposed route that parallels the Savannah River then heads south to Jacksonville.
The company applied on Feb. 13 to the Georgia Department of Transportation for a certificate of public convenience and necessity, the first of two steps before it’s granted the right to exercise eminent domain along the 210 miles of the route in Georgia.
DOT Commissioner Russell McMurry expects to decide on the certificate May 19.
A second and final DOT hearing on the proposed Palmetto Pipeline will be 5-7 p.m. today at the Waynesboro Campus of Augusta Technical College, 216 Highway 24 South, Waynesboro.