BISMARCK Landowners from Cogswell, N.D., said Thursday that representatives of TransCanada's proposed Keystone Pipeline refuse to negotiate easements and threatened two of them with condemnation proceedings if they don't sign the contract TransCanada puts in front of them.
Three landowners, Valera Hayen, Paul Mathews and Bob Bandaret, testified on the second day of the Public Service Commission's Bismarck hearing on whether to grant a siting permit for the 30-inch crude oil pipeline to run through eastern North Dakota.
At least one had also testified during two days of hearings in Park River and Valley City, N.D., in July.
The company plans to send 435,000 barrels a day of Alberta crude oil through the line to refineries in Illinois, beginning in November 2009, and increase to 590,0000 a year later, after an extension is built to Oklahoma. It wants to start building the North Dakota section next May in a corridor running from near Walhalla to near Cogswell and Oakes.
The landowners said they haven't signed easement contracts with TransCanada because they don't like the company's take-it-or-leave-it stance.
ADVERTISEMENT
Hayen said the easement contract she was given asked her to grant passage for more than one pipeline and pay for crop damage one time only, no matter how many times the company comes through her fields to work on the line.
Hayen wants to negotiate crop damage and she said the company's land agent pressured her to sign right away instead of negotiating. She has not signed.
Mathews said he told the land agent who visited him last week that the pipeline may end up with a route through the state and an easement contract for his property, "but not this one." He wants an easement specifying the line will be 1,000 feet from the house he built two years ago, not the 156 feet or 500 feet the company has proposed.
The land agent would not discuss it, Mathew said. "He said he'd visit me two more times, and then my documents will end up in a condemnation file."
Bandaret said he, too, was threatened.
"I'm a landowner who was told my case would be turned over to TransCanada's lawyers for condemnation," he said.
Commissioner Susan Wefald asked Bandaret what he wants to have happen.
"We would be willing to work with them, but we would like a fair easement contract," Bandaret said.
ADVERTISEMENT
Wefald disliked hearing about condemnation threats.
She said that in the years she has been on the commission, no pipeline and no electric transmission line the PSC has sited have involved eminent domain.
"For 15 years, there has not been any condemnation and I would like to keep that record" for as long as she serves on the commission, she said.
Another witness who opposes the proposed placement of the pipeline was Richard Starke, a retired engineer from Burlington, N.D., who told commissioners that the Interstate 29 right of way "is an excellent place to put it."
He said the right of way is 400 feet wide, is owned by the state, and any leaks that would develop in the line would be spotted quickly by motorists on the highway. The company could place the line through the interchange embankments by doing the same kind of boring the company proposes to do under the Pembina River Gorge.
Company witnesses testified Wednesday that using the I-29 corridor isn't possible.
Cole works for Forum Communications Co., which owns the Herald.
