Neon-pink flags poke up from the black bottomland swamps here along a 210-mile stretch through east Georgia, rising from tangled underbrush and across murky creekbeds.

Each marks a 50-foot-wide path of the proposed Palmetto Pipeline that's sparked one of the most remarkable battles over property rights in Georgia in recent memory.

A powerful trifecta of business forces, environmental groups and political leaders has united to fight the proposal from Kinder Morgan, the Texas company charting the fuel pipeline's three-state course. Some of the landowners have already given up swaths of their property for towering transmission cables and roadways, but they draw the line at a pipeline for an area with no shortage of fuel.

State leaders in Georgia and South Carolina have recently thrown up new legal hurdles that threaten the construction. But for all the pushback, the project remains very much in play.

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Brant Frost V is a former vice-chair of the Georgia GOP whose father, Brant Frost IV, founded First Liberty Building & Loan in 1993.   (YouTube screenshot)

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. (center) is flanked by GOP whip Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo. (left) and Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, as Thune speak to reporters at the Capitol in Washington on Tuesday, July 1, 2025. Earlier Tuesday, the Senate passed the budget reconciliation package of President Donald Trump's signature bill of big tax breaks and spending cuts. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

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