Andrew Gates once again provides his usual intelligent commentary to one of my postings, in this case, Gasland – The Documentary.

These companies will DEFINITELY take advantage of land owners in a second if they can.

My paternal ancestors were coal miners from Kentucky. My great grandfather worked for the mining company for a very long time. When he retired, the company gave him a piece of land on one of the mountains (that they thought was worthless, of course) that they owned. That was sort of a tradition back in that time.

Anyways, about 10 years after he retired, another company comes to him and says that they found more coal on that mountain and that they wanted his permission to mine the coal from under his property. They offered him a fixed amount per month for the rights to mine.

My great grandfather, being a veteran of the mining industry, knew that the company would mine the coal as quickly as possible without regard to his property, so that they would only have to pay him a few thousand dollars for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of coal.

So my great grandfather told them that he would not give them rights to mine unless they paid him a fixed amount per ton of coal that was mined from his property. The company did NOT like those terms and tried everything in the book to get around it, but eventually they caved and accepted his terms. Because the company gave him so much grief about the terms of the mining deal, he also forced them to pay him a fee for every truck that went up and down HIS road to the mountain.

Its always a good story to tell to people who think that one man cant stand up to a large company.

I’m glad for the comment. There is no one in my family that has that kind of experience. (Pilants tend to be ministers, teachers and farmers although on rare occasions they may be found as Internet bloggers.)

Here’s another preview of Gasland: