South Dakota landowners voice concerns about proposed TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline

SD ranchers voice concerns about Keystone pipeline

PIERRE, S.D. — Ranchers who live along the route of a crude oil pipeline that TransCanada Keystone wants to build across western South Dakota said Tuesday they are worried about oil spills and damage to their land, water and roads.

More than 50 landowners and others showed up at a public hearing Tuesday night about the 313-mile Keystone XL pipeline. The meeting was organized by the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission, which is holding a formal hearing this week on TransCanada Keystone’s application for a construction permit.

The landowners’ comments will not be submitted as formal evidence, but the three commissioners will consider their remarks at the formal hearing. If they approve the construction permit, the commissioners could also take into account the landowners’ comments when setting conditions.

Dwayne Vig of Mud Butte and other ranchers told the public hearing they did not trust TransCanada Keystone because its employees had already violated some agreements. Vig said he agreed to allow a company agent to conduct a survey on his land, but that the agreement was broken when a company vehicle drove in the wrong place, which he said amounted to trespass.

“We live on trust and handshakes. That’s what concerns us,” Vig told the commission.

Robert Jones, a TransCanada vice president responsible for the Keystone XL project, said the contractor who had violated that agreement was no longer employed by the company.

“Trespassing is absolutely not acceptable,” Jones said. “I do understand Mr. Vig’s frustration and I do apologize.”

The proposed pipeline would deliver up to 900,000 barrels a day of Alberta tar sands crude oil from near Hardisty, Alberta to Gulf Coast terminals and refineries in Texas. It would enter South Dakota from Montana in Harding County and run through Butte, Perkins, Meade, Pennington, Haakon, Jones, Lyman and Tripp counties before entering Nebraska.

The South Dakota portion is estimated to cost $920 million. The company wants to begin construction in 2011.

TransCanada already is building a pipeline through the east of the state to deliver Canadian crude to refineries in Illinois and Oklahoma.

Some landowners said the company had ruined roads and caused other damage by working in wet areas during construction of that pipeline, although Jones said the company did not violate any conditions of its construction permit. A lawyer for the commission, Kara Semmler, said county highway superintendents have reported that TransCanada is working with them to get roads repaired.

Several landowners voiced concern about what would happen to the pipeline after it reaches the end of its useful life — in several decades’ time.

“No property owner wants an abandoned gasoline station under their property,” said Harding County rancher David Niemi, who was among several who urged the commission to require TransCanada to post a bond that would provide money to clean up possible spills, repair damage to land and take care of the pipeline when it is no longer in use.

John Harter, who ranches near Winner, said he worries that the pipeline could leak and contaminate underground water.

“Our water source is more valuable than any source of oil,” Harter told the commissioners.

In response to complaints that the proposed pipeline was not American, Jones said U.S. subsidiaries were handling the project.