Can some Nebraska farmers kill the Keystone XL pipeline?
“When I first started this, it was about my house,” said Shannon Graves, who owns a hardware store in Polk, Neb.—population roughly 300—and lives less than 100 yards from the proposed route of the Keystone XL pipeline. “I just wanted to protect my home.”
That was six years ago. Now, Graves said, “what was once just my home is now my world that I’m standing to protect.”
So last week she headed to Lincoln, the state capital, for hearings to determine whether the pipeline would serve Nebraskans’ public interest, the final regulatory hurdle for the long-contentious project.
After years of protest by environmentalists, the Obama administration in 2015 rejected TransCanada’s proposal for the 1,179-mile pipeline, which would deliver crude oil from the Alberta tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico. In January, President Donald Trump resurrected the project with a presidential memo and executive order.
On a national level, the pipeline has been opposed largely by environmentalists, but in Nebraska, it’s been fought mainly by farmers and ranchers who fear it could erode their soil and hurt their land values. Last week, a number of them—now educated in the intricacies of property easements, eminent domain, and bitumen—testified before the state’s Public Service Commission, hoping to persuade its members to reject it.
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