Many conservative Americans back the Keystone XL pipeline, but they also back property rights. So what happens when both issues conflict with one another?
Last month, a judge in Lamar County, Texas, ruled that Calgary-based TransCanada can run a pipeline across a family's private property, otherwise known as Red'Arc Farm. Julia Trigg Crawford manages the farm.
"My family has been in the county since the 1850s, but my grandfather bought this particular farm in 1948," she tells OneNewsNow. "It's about 650 acres, 400 of it ... crop land where we grow wheat, corn and soybeans, and the balance of the farm is pasture land and the homestead, we have a small herd of cattle and things like that."
It's an area that Crawford admits is not foreign to pipelines.
"There are other pipelines in the county, and I guess it was probably five or six years ago when they approached my father, who was then the farm manager, about crossing our place," she explains. "My dad said, 'We don't want a pipeline on our place. Can you guys find another route?' And the other two pipelines did. They're not very far away from us, but they're not on our place."
When TransCanada approached Crawford's father in 2008 about coming across their property, she says her dad posed the same question. According to Crawford, TransCanada basically said No, we're coming across.
"From 2008 to 2011 there were discussions," says Crawford. "The initial offer from TransCanada for the easement across our property was around $5,000. That's a one-time payment for them to own an easement to pretty much do what they want across your land. So it started off at $5,000. Over the course of the next three years, it went up to around $20,000."
Crawford tells OneNewsNow that her family's position was they still did not want the pipeline -- and for a number of reasons, including giving up their land to a foreign corporation.
"We are concerned about how it will hurt the land. We're concerned about the threat that it poses to our water because they are going to drill this pipeline under a creek to get into our land -- and that creek is a creek that the state has given us water rights to," she says. "What they propose to transport -- diluted bitumen -- is a whole different cat[egory] than regular oil. This stuff sinks when it hits water, so it completely degrades the baseline of your creek."
TransCanada eventually sought help from the courts. The family's land was condemned, something Crawford admits is a fairly easy thing to do in Texas. In August 2012, a county judge ruled that TransCanada can use eminent domain to obtain the right of way across her family's farm. A panel of three local citizens put the value of the land at $10,000.
"At that point, TransCanada thought they were just going to walk away, but that's where our story gets interesting -- that a small farm in Texas stood up and continues to stand up against the pipeline that claims to have eminent domain when they can't come to the table with the proof that they're really qualified to do so."
The Crawfords' attorney is putting together an appeal of the condemnation. It will go before the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Throughout the ordeal, Julia Trigg Crawford has been invited to speak before the state committee that is responsible for eminent domain. She's optimistic that something will change in Texas about eminent domain and property rights.
OneNewsNow contacted TransCanada for comment on this story, beginning with Julia Crawford's claims about the company's offers for the land in question. TransCanada spokesman Grady Semmens spoke with OneNewsNow.
"I can't speak specifically to our dealings with the Crawford family because our dealings with individual landowners are confidential -- for pretty obvious reasons, I would say," states Semmens. "But certainly this is a very public issue with the Crawford family because they are particularly vocal opponents of our Gulf Coast project pipeline, which we have begun construction on. In the beginning of August, we began construction on [the southern leg]."
Semmens does say that TransCanada approached landowners along the pipeline right of way, including the Crawford family, to discuss the route and easements, which are "very common features" on virtually everyone's property in terms of pipelines for sewer, water, natural gas and oil.
"That is what it's all about ... us trying to reach voluntary, negotiated agreements with the landowners along the right of way to ensure that they are fairly compensated for allowing us access to the land, to use it for the pipeline, as well as compensating them for any disturbance or inconvenience that our pipeline might pose to them."
Semmens adds that TransCanada has had good dealings with more than 95 percent of all the landowners along this pipeline route in Oklahoma and Texas, and the company has reached voluntary, negotiated settlements. He says the use of eminent domain is extremely rare and the tool of last resort.
As for Crawford's concerns about the pipeline being drilled under a creek, Semmens says the Gulf Coast project -- and the Keystone expansion project, overall -- has gone through many years of environmental reviews and planning, including independent reviews by the State Department.
"It will be the newest and safest pipeline every built in the United States," he tells OneNewsNow. "There is a whole list of new and extraordinary safety measures that are being implemented on these pipelines in order to try and ensure that they never have any kind of issues in terms of significant leaks or spills or breaks."
Semmens says drilling underneath the Crawford family's creek is one of the safety mesaures.
"It's called horizontal directional drilling, where we'll be drilling several yards below the bedrock below any rivers and major creeks, so that the pipeline goes under them instead of having the pipeline resting on the bottom of a river or creek, as done in the past, and can lead to issues in terms of if the pipeline has a problem."
As for Crawford's concern about what's actually in the pipeline, Semmens offers the following:
"Saying that it's something new and completely different is certainly not correct, and diluted bitumin in particular -- we're talking about the essentially crude oil that's produced from the Canadian oil sands -- has been proven by many studies to behave exactly like any other crude oil in a pipeline. It's no more dangerous or corrosive to a pipeline than any other kind of crude oil."
At the end of the day, Crawford says her family is not against pipelines or the use of eminent domain when it's bringing water to a community or building a road for someone. Their issue is that a foreign corporation, TransCanada, has found the loopholes in the Texas system to pick up the club of eminent domain.