Call To Action: Stand up to protect WV property rights! This will take less than 5 minutes. You can do it while waiting for your coffee to brew. Scroll to the bottom if you only have 2 minutes!
What to do:
Email or call your state senators and tell them all West Virginians—Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and progressives, mineral rights owners and surface rights owners—oppose forcing property owners into leases. It’s outrageous that HB4268, a bill that hands our property rights to corporations, is a higher priority than bills that would help actual voters. Our representatives must not put corporations first!
Why do it:
This bill would legally FORCE property owners to lease their mineral rights to corporations—whether it’s a good deal for them or not. It’s not the free market when you’re forced to take the offer! Yet this bill allows the government to hold prices artificially low for corporations, and removes due process protections for regular people. You may as well just hand over your wallet, too! Shouldn’t they be working for us, rather than their lobbyist buddies?
This year industry bigwigs want to rebrand Forced Pooling and call it “co-tenancy” because they recognize it’s such a poisonous term here in WV, and people know to oppose it. That’s why they want to slip it through under a different name, even though industry recognizes that it is Forced Pooling.
They may want to call it something else, but don’t let them fool you with their forked tongues and slimy doublespeak. It is FORCED POOLING; they’ve just changed the size of the pool to a single tract rather than multiple tracts.
DO IT NOW:
Phone or email your state senators! Find your district on the map below…
… then find your legislators’ contact info here.
Call and demand that your senators oppose Forced Pooling, no matter what new name the industry wants to use for it. Tell them, “You’ve lost my vote, and I will be working for your opponent, if you attack property rights with HB 4268! The People should have the right to hold out for a better price—or it’s not the free market. And our representatives should be working for West Virginians, not lobbyists and corporations!”
Note: If you want to really get under their skin, check to see where your senators’ campaign donations come from before you call.
Have just one more minute?
Call or email Senator Charles Trump and demand that he puts SB 360 on the agenda for the Judiciary Committee.
SB 360 is a bill that keeps corporations from stealing royalties from regular WV mineral owners. This bill is being sponsored by Republican Senator Clements. BOTH parties should support it because it protects WV property owners. But fellow Republican Senator Charles Trump is letting this bill languish in the committee he chairs.
Why? It’s being opposed by corporations like EQT, whose board member Bray Cary has been installed in the capitol as a “citizen volunteer,” installed because … um, the governor thought corporations didn’t have enough power and influence in our government, yet…??
Email: charles.trump@wvsenate.gov
Capitol Phone: (304) 357-7880
Home Phone: (304) 258-5133
Business Phone: (304) 258-1414
The Appalachian Oracle 