THE future of Britain's energy supplies could be determined in a fight over two ancient Herefordshire water meadows which have remained undisturbed for at least 400 years.

Environmentalists are in a stand-off over plans to drive a 186km natural gas pipeline - among the biggest of its kind in Europe - across Turnastone Court Farm in the Golden Valley.

National Grid has put in a compulsory purchase bid for the land it needs, a strip of not much more than 140 metres.

The Countryside Restoration Trust, which paid more than £1 million for the 247-acre farm site in 2003, says it will take National Grid to a land tribunal if common ground cannot be found.

If the tribunal rules against the bid, the pipeline, crucial to the government's energy policy, has nowhere left to go.

Now the Greens have joined the fray. County campaigner Felicity Norman attacked the pipeline as outdated and destructive.

She has sent an objection, on behalf of Hereford Green Party, to the latest round of public consultation on the pipeline, saying the millions spent on it would be better invested in alternative energy schemes.

In August, the Hereford Times revealed that county planners had refused National Grid permission to build a compressor station at Peterstow because of concerns about its environmental impact.

This week National Grid, which is committed to having the pipeline built over the next two years, announced its intention to pursue compulsory purchase orders that allowed it to cross Turnastone Court.

Caroline Davidson, for National Grid, said the orders, sought as a last resort, were not about buying the land but acquiring the right to use it. The company was still hopeful of a voluntary settlement, she said.

Nigel Housden, of the Countryside Restoration Trust, said it was ready to take National Grid to a land tribunal over the orders.

"The meadows are a species rich habitat which we bought, with the farm, to save from this sort of thing. They've been undisturbed for about 400 years. A high pressure liquid gas pipeline destroys the essence of the land and the farm," said Mr Housden.

The meadows offered key archeological evidence of attempts to establish a utopian agricultural community in the Golden Valley during the 1590s, he said National Grid cannot bypass the farm to the south, which would put the pipeline into a protected site of special scientific interest. Putting it any further north is said to threaten the hydrology of the whole Golden Valley.

"So if it can't go through the farm it has got nowhere to go - like the government's flawed energy policy," said Mr Housden.

The government views the pipeline as vital to Britain's soaring demand for gas.

Liquefied supplies from the Middle and Far East would be landed at Milford Haven, in south west Wales, and pumped into existing networks through the new pipeline - plans for which were first revealed by the Hereford Times a year ago. It would run 186 miles to Tirley in Gloucestershire, crossing the Brecon Beacons, the Golden Valley, the Wye Valley and south Herefordshire.