Should you be paid rent for a pipeline?

[ASRG]

When a pipeline runs across your land you are paid a lump sum for land use and a 2 year loss of use...and nothing more.
And yet your land is affected for as long as that pipeline is in the ground. The rural municipality collects a linear tax every year on that pipeline. How they justify that "annual rent" I'll never know!
Maybe instead of the municipality collecting that tax the farmer should get it? After all it is his land and he is the only one affected?
The rural counties don't like to talk too much about the linear tax, because it is like money from heaven...they don't do anything for it and it is very lucrative! A linear tax is charged for every foot of pipeline as well as every foot in the wellbore! When the companies start drilling several horizontal bores fanning out from one vertical hole the money is going to be flowing in!
As I said it is hard to find out just how much money comes in from the linear tax because the municipalities try to keep it secret, but a general estimate for a 1,000 meter well bore and a 4 inch low pressure pipeline right of way off the center of a quarter section of land is around $5,000....or in other words a little better than $30/acre/year in annual "rent"! When the companies start horizontally drilling the shale with 4(or more)horizontal shafts off the vertical hole, this linear "rent could be up to $20,000 or more!
With the new well spacing rules coming to Alberta there could be a virtual checkerboard of horizontal well bores under every foot of your land and the rural municipality will collect an annual rent on every foot! This annual "rent" would far exceed any surface crop production you could possibly produce and in fact might exceed the value of the land!
If the landowner was recieving that "rent", instead of the municipality, farming just might be more profitable?

[ColevilleH2S]

Maybe because your municipality is flush with new cash from this linear tax, your share of taxes will go down. LOL not likely.

[silverback]

I have never heard of this before. Which province(s)?

There is no way that money should be going to the municipality instead of the landowner. No way! Pipeline damage and nuisance lasts forever.

[ASRG]

silverback: In Alberta. Not sure about Sask/Man/BC? But definitely in every rural county/MD in Alberta.
In addition to the linear tax (which is also paid on every mile of railroads and every foot of power lines) the rural municipalities recieve a large portion of the "machinery tax" which is a tax on every well head, riser, gas plant, etc.(anything above the ground).
If you can get a financial statement from your local municipality it might show the linear tax or it might be hidden under "business taxes", but it is there? The "machinery tax" is harder to find as the province collects it and then gives back the lions share to the counties through a grant.
If you live in rural Alberta the linear tax and the machinery tax are quite a bit higher than taxes on farm land. The mill rate is usually at the top of the scale(about 15 mills) while farmland is usually around 5 mills.
In my municipality (red Deer County) the linear tax take was around $13 million while farmland and residential taxes were only around $9 million. I don't know what the machinery tax was, but probably substantial-RD county had a total tax take of $35 million!
Don't know if you are old enough to remember when Ralph Klein brought in the "residential tax" on farmland or not(early 90s)? That was the first time a farm residence was taxed as a seperate entity from farm land....and was taxed at a 3 acre subdivision value? Part of the deal was the rural municipalities would also get the "linear tax"!
The rural counties jumped all over it and ever since have done everything in their power to suck up to the oil and power companies!