ON THE LINE

...It instructs the companies to follow eleven recommendations drafted to reflect the farmers' concerns, should alternative routes prove "unfeasible...

...They came in here pounding sticks in the ground before we knew about their plans...

...In September, Bauer and the landowners countered the companies' efforts by filing suit, asking a Dane County court to overturn a state decision to deny citizens a public hearing to air their concerns surrounding the pipeline...

...Paul to revoke its approval of plans for the pipeline to cross the Sugar and and Little Sugar rivers, on grounds that current approval requirements do not include adequate public input or Corps guidance...

...Thousands of COs were legally recognized in those wars, and many thousands of others refused service and left the country or went to prison...

...Bauer and the farmers also intend to address the Federal Energy Regulation Commission (FERC), which originally granted permission to begin construction May 15, 1991...

...history...

...In addition, the landowners have formally asked the Army Corps of Engineers in St...

...One of the latter was Randy Kehler, whom Dan Ellsberg met in 1969 at a War Resisters International conference just before Kehler went to prison...

...They say current legal procedures and laws favor corporations and ignore the concerns of area residents...

...This is a classic example of big business trying to run roughshod over the little guys, the taxpayer," argues Mike Bauer, attorney for the coalition of landowners and farmers opposing the pipeline...

...But they are optimistic that political pressure will result in the moving of the pipeline...

...The report asks that "MGE and NNG review the restrictions and costs of pursuing the alternative routes...

...MGE and NNG indeed find this route unfeasible...

...Other celebrants included conscientious objectors and combat veterans of the wars in Korea and Vietnam...

...Forums and workshops during the weekend offered participants from around the world opportunities to share stories and varied methods of war resistance...

...Ellsberg attributes his inspiration to expose the Pentagon Papers to this encounter...

...The alternative route, which most local officials have also endorsed, runs along a railroad corridor and does not affect farmland, but would cost more to build...

...Also present was Wally Nelson, a World War II prisoner now in frail health, who traveled by bus from his home at Quaker Woolman Hill in Massachusetts, where he and his wife maintain an organic garden and a life of total resistance...

...The event on which "celebration" was pegged occurred on October 16, 1940, when Congress passed legislation authorizing the first peacetime draft in U.S...

...Ann Morrissett Davidon (Ann Morrissett Davidon, a longtime peace activist, is a free-lance writer and critic...

...But the landowners and their supporters do not intend to throw in the towel...

...Although NNG originally failed to notify Wisconsin's agriculture department of the project, the company did not suffer any penalty for its tardiness...

...Wisconsin statutes require preparation of an agricultural-impact statement when any proposed construction project may involve the acquisition of more than five acres of farmland through condemnation...

...About 6,000 men refused to cooperate at all with the draft and were imprisoned during World War II...

...Though initiated by World War II COs and the National Interreligious Board for Conscientious Objectors, this celebration was not all gray-haired and male...

...According to Bauer, NNG has now threatened to request waivers from the Commission's original restrictions, to guarantee that attempts to stop the pipeline fail...

...Their attitude has been: 'We're here now, please get out of our way.'" "NNG came in here in their supreme arrogance," says Marlin Wild, a farmer in Montrose whose land would be affected...

...But thirty-seven of forty-three landowners contacted by NNG have refused to sign documents granting the company permanent fifty-foot easements and use of an additional twenty-five-foot block of property during construction...

...They have organized the support of fellow citizens and elected officials, and insist that people power and democracy will prevail over "corporate greed and arrogance," to quote one angry landowner...

...They won't give it up on account of us...

...We are asking that the Corps protect the public interest in this navigable waterway," Bauer says...

...Indeed, NNG has not broken any laws, and has already secured the Federal and state approvals necessary to begin eminent-domain procedures against the uncooperative landowners...

...Reunion for Resisters BRYNMAWR, PENNSYLVANIA It was a hot August weekend when more than 400 war re-sisters got together on the campus of Bryn Mawr College to mark a fiftieth anniversary...

...And, while predominantly white, the group included several African-Americans who spoke eloquently of the direct and indirect effects of war on them and their communities...

...It's like stopping a baseball game in the middle and saying, 'We don't like the rules,'" he says...

...Among those who went to prison was Dave Dellinger, later an organizer of the Mobilization Against the War in Vietnam and, later still, keynote speaker at the August celebration...

...These farmers and property owners warn MGE and NNG that they are prepared to fight to protect their land, and the group has since hired a lawyer...

...About half the participants were women, and there were a number of young people, "standing up for peace...

...Nor did they like being neatly boxed off while others were forced to go off to kill and be killed...

...NNG and MGE officials still insist the pipeline will be built as planned, regardless of residents' attempts to prevent it...

...the Internal Revenue Service has threatened to seize his home...

...Their originally proposed route was simply the cheapest and most convenient for them," says John Sayles, a farmer fighting the pipeline...

...The proposed pipeline, costing an estimated $3.1 million to construct, will join a larger system of interstate pipelines...

...Northern Natural Gas Company, a division of Enron Corporation of Houston, plans to build a sixteen-inch pipeline through the Wisconsin counties of Green and Dane to supply Madison Gas and Electric Company with an additional source of natural gas...

...NNG did not contact us initially last spring when they proposed the pipeline," complains Steve Stuckert, a resident of Montrose...

...MGE officials estimate that the new pipeline would save its customers $9 per household its first year in operation, and will effectively hold down gas prices by increasing competition...

...Current laws and regulations favor the companies, especially since the community does stand to save in utility costs, and landowners do not see NNG or MGE having a sudden change of heart regarding the pipeline...

...Some 12,000 conscientious objectors went into the camps and other alternative service, and 24,000 were assigned to perform noncombatant service in the military...

...Ironically, the law also gave legal recognition, for the first time, to conscientious objectors, to whom it offered the options of some kinds of alternative service or noncombatant work in the armed forces...

...They turned the weekend from a commemoration of the fifty-year-old draft law into a celebration of continuing resistance and actions aimed at eliminating conscription for war and, ultimately, war itself...

...NNG, the largest gas-transmission company in the United States, has 1,200 miles of pipeline and serves about 130 communities in Wisconsin...

...Mike Leon (Mike Leon has been covering the pipeline controversy for The Capital Times, Madison's afternoon daily...

...But the landowners have joined forces to fight two companies that want to build a natural-gas pipeline through an area which includes prime farmland and environmentally sensitive woodlands...

...Kehler, later head of the Nuclear Freeze Campaign, is a tax re-sister...

...The agricultural-impact statement, finally published on August 5, verifies that an alternative route endorsed by landowners would be "agriculturally preferred...

...We will inform FERC that this time, the landowners will have a say and Wisconsin politicians of both parties have indicated that they will assist to ensure that," he adds...

...Pacifists had worked hard for such a provision to prevent the vicious treatment re-sisters had endured in World War I. But many conscientious objectors were not happy about being sent into Government-approved alternative service or the civilian public-service camps operated by the historic peace churches (Quaker, Brethren, and Men-nonite) under the ultimate aegis of the Selective Service System...

...These restrictions "are meant to protect the land and the environment," Bauer says...

...These landowners have vowed to stop construction, and assured NNG that they will not be intimidated by its threats to initiate eminent-domain procedures which could force the owners to relinquish their land...

...MGE's head of stategic services, Nick Fuhrman, says the landowners have used fair and legal channels in attempting to undermine the pipeline's construction, but now they simply refuse to recognize that they have no legal grounds to prevent it...

...Celebration of Conscience," an occasion for a nostalgic reunion of World War II conscientious objectors, was more importantly a galvanizing gathering of peace activists who came to strategize current resistance to war and preparations for war...