http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/01/20/faced-land-seizures-defiant-nebraskans-vow-halt-keystone-xl
Published on Tuesday, January 20, 2015
by Common Dreams
Faced With Land Seizures, Defiant Nebraskans Vow to Halt Keystone XL
'Our land is not for sale and we will keep fighting TransCanada until we
see their tail lights go back across our border.'
by Nadia Prupis, staff writer
As Canadian energy company TransCanada filed eminent domain claims
against Nebraska landowners on Tuesday for the construction of the
controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, families whose properties
are on the verge of forced seizure say they will do whatever is
necessary to shut down the project.
Landowners from Nebraska's York and Holt counties last week filed suit
against TransCanada to stall or even stop construction of the Keystone
XL pipeline through their state. On Tuesday, they continued to call on
President Barack Obama to veto the project altogether.
"Today, Nebraska families are facing an inconceivable moment when land
that has been in their hands for generations is being taken away from
them by a foreign oil company," Bold Nebraska director Jane Kleeb stated
in a press release. "Landowners will match TransCanada’s lawsuits in
local courts and continue to take our fight to the one person who can
put an end to all of this: President Obama."
Obama has promised to veto legislation that would force the approval of
the Keystone XL pipeline; Senate Republicans have vowed to get the
pipeline approved as one of their first acts of 2015.
TransCanada's use of the "unconstitutional and void" eminent domain law,
which gives the government the right to seize private lands for public
use without compensation, is "another bullying move by the foreign
corporation that swears they are going to be a good neighbor," said Jim
Tarnick, one of the landowners who joined in the suit.
"From the Kalamazoo to the Yellowstone rivers and all across the United
States, tar sands are a horrible danger and threat that the President
must reject," Tarnick added.
Bold Nebraska noted that public support for the Keystone XL pipeline has
waned over time, with only 41 percent approving of the project in a
recent poll.
Yet while landowners, the president, and the public at large continue to
speak out against the pipeline, former Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman,
who approved Keystone construction in the state, "abus[ed] the powers of
his office" by taking authority away from the people of Nebraska and
giving it to himself "to approve a pipeline and give a foreign
corporation the power of eminent domain before they have all their
permits in place," the lawsuit states.
"While we fight to ensure TransCanada and the state of Nebraska do not
run roughshod over farmers and ranchers, we also call upon President
Obama to reject Keystone XL now," Kleeb said last week.
Meghan Hammond, a landowner whose clean energy project would have to be
torn down for the construction of the pipeline, stated on Tuesday: "We
can not survive as a family business without clean water. Our government
has no solution to clean up tar sands and benzene from our water. Our
land is not for sale and we will keep fighting TransCanada until we see
their tail lights go back across our border."
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