AN AMERICAN DREAM: PROPERTY RIGHTS

Can property owners defend their land, or will their American Dream be ruined?
This film reveals how the “property rights” of corporations bump up against those of ordinary citizens.

BACKSTORY

One doesn’t have to listen to the song “Country Roads, Take Me Home” too many times to realize that West Virginians love their land. And yet, West Virginians have been told for generations that serving up their land is “Powering America” and patriotic. Citizens must always be ready to sacrifice their home and their land for an economy that rarely trickles down to them.

Traditionally a poor state, many of West Virginia’s landowners sold their mineral rights to investors, for quick cash. And like other states with “Split Estate” rules, the laws favor those who own the mineral rights under the surface above the safety and security of the people who live on the land. With the Natural Gas boom, conflicts between surface owners and mineral rights owners are more and more common. The push to frack for natural gas and dig potentially explosive pipelines across the state has set up battles between corporations who believe they have the right to extract fossil fuels by any means necessary, and the landowners who view their property as their personal piece of “almost heaven”.

Landowners have come home to find fracking wells on their land, or survey stakes placed on their property, indicating that a pipeline is going through. Will they defend their land, or will their American Dream be ruined? When the “property rights” of corporations bump up against those of citizens, who will prevail? How do these landowners fight industry to protect their air, water and land?