SOMERS – A Somers man who was briefly arrested over his flag-based protest of an oil pipeline now says the pipeline construction has broken his water main, as he feared.

Homer Martz said the line was quickly repaired by crews, as they had promised. But he claims the company didn’t tell him they would be working there, as they were required to, and as a result his water heater has been destroyed.

“I have paperwork that says they would contact me,” Martz said. “They haven’t contacted me once.”

“Like I said, I don’t count. I’m not the landowner.”

Martz has a permanent easement to the well, which is located on his neighbor’s land south of Somers, near the border of Calhoun and Webster counties. The well is within the pipeline’s construction easement.

At his neighbor Ken Anderson’s eminent domain hearing, Anderson testified that Martz was not notified ahead of time by Dakota Access LLC that the work could affect him, nor told about the proceedings.

The Texas-based company is in the process of building a 1,172-mile pipeline from North Dakota to Illinois, using eminent domain to obtain easements on the few properties where a voluntary agreement couldn’t be reached.

At that hearing, Anderson claimed that the company was not addressing Martz’s concerns, but a company representative said the construction could be done without breaking the line, and if it were broken it would be promptly fixed.

Martz said he wasn’t around Thursday or Friday, and when he got back late Saturday he found rust in his cold water line, and air in the hot water heater.

“Some time last week when I was gone, they broke my water line,” he said. “The other end of the line back-siphoned my house and burned out my water heater.”

“The water heater happened to cycle and burned that top element out.”

“I called them immediately when I figured it out, and they said they’d get right on it,” Martz added. “I waited four days, almost a week, and then I called them. He said, ‘they haven’t done anything yet?’ I said no. He said, ‘we’ll get right back to you today.’ I never heard anything back from them from yesterday.”

Martz contends the company didn’t tell him work would be going on.

“I was supposed to be there when they did that. They were supposed to let me know when they were going to do it. But they were in a hurry, they wanted to get that job done, because they want to get the eminent domain stuff done,” he said.

“Their word ain’t worth a nickel.”

The land is owned by Anderson’s family corporation, Prendergast Enterprises, which is one of the plaintiffs in a suit against the Iowa Utilities Board, claiming the regulatory body had no right to grant eminent domain to a private company.

Martz also claims he’s had trouble getting calls back from the IUB in the past. He hasn’t contacted it yet about the current situation.

“The only person who ever got back to me was (state Rep.) Mike Sexton, and the sheriff when he brought my confiscated equipment back,” Martz said.

The Calhoun County sheriff briefly took away Martz’s U.S. flag and a protest sign. Martz had flown the flag upside-down to protest what he called a “trampling” of his rights, and was arrested in August under Iowa’s flag desecration statute.

The charges were later dropped, with Calhoun County Attorney Tina Meth Farrington saying the sheriff’s deputies who charged Martz weren’t aware courts had struck down the law.

Attempts to reach Dakota Access for comment were unsuccessful Tuesday.