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Pipeline plan meets growing resistance
News Articles Featured | Argus Leader | October 29, 2011
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Gov. Dennis Daugaard will ask the Legislature this session to "impose additional protections" on the Keystone XL pipeline, similar to concessions that Nebraska lawmakers recently won from TransCanada, a spokesman said Friday.
The Nebraska Legislature goes into special session this week to determine whether the state can force the Calgary-based company to reroute the pipeline around the ecologically sensitive Sandhills region overlaying the Ogallala Aquifer.
In the run-up to the special session, TransCanada met with Nebraska officials and offered six concessions in lieu of rerouting the pipeline, among them encircling the pipeline with concrete or rock jacketing where it crosses a shallow water table, moving spill response teams closer to the Sandhills and offering a $100 million performance bond to cover spill cleanup.
Daugaard spokesman Tony Venhuizen said offering similar protections for South Dakota is only fair.
"We've already let TransCanada know that they can't be cutting special deals for some states just because they protest more," he said. "The squeaky Cornhusker wheel shouldn't get all the grease."
Nebraska's upcoming special session, and to a lesser extent South Dakota's announcement this past week, are the latest obstacles to a project that has met much more resistance than the first pipeline TransCanada built through South Dakota.
That pipeline, Keystone I, runs through the eastern part of the state and began pumping Canadian oil to Illinois and Oklahoma last year. When and if Keystone XL, which would run across parts of western and central South Dakota, comes online is uncertain. Opponents nationwide - mainly environmentalists, land owners and Native Americans - are waging a much more aggressive campaign to block Keystone XL than they mustered against the first project.
Proposals rejected for cleanup funds
Aquifer contamination from groundwater spills have been a concern for both pipelines.
Dakota Rural Action and some South Dakota legislators have pushed for a pipeline cleanup fund, similar to what TransCanada now is offering Nebraska, in each session since 2008. All failed. The bill introduced in the 2011 session would have established a $30 million cleanup fund, Money would have come from a 2-cent-per-barrel tax on large oil pipelines.
Tagged with: keystone xl, transcanada, pipeline, nebraska, ogallala aquifer, dennis daugaard
