Pipeline Opponents -- Not NIMBYs, Not Tree Huggers, Not Greedy

A farmer testifying right now before the PUC (Mr. Richard Hastings, perhaps related to Bob Hastings, whose prose graced these pages yesterday) says that in dealing with the TransCanada agents, he's not terribly interested in having someone throw money at him as "compensation" for harm to the land. See -- for some people, land means something more than money.

This farmer says he didn't ask the TransCanada land agent for more money. He didn't even ask them to put the pipeline elsewhere. He just asked for some changes in wording to give him a little more assurance that TransCanada will do what it says it will, with no monkey business later. Evidently, TransCanada would have none of it.

We're not talking radical environmentalists or closed-minded NIMBYites here. (Sorry, Joel and Bob, no straw men to argue against here.) We're talking honest South Dakota farmers who aren't even trying to milk the system. They just want a fair contract... and apparently TransCanada doesn't have the respect for us to negotiate.

Hastings's son Chris steps to the mike to talk about noxious weeds and rodents. He says busting up sod for the pipeline will give noxious weeds an advantage. He also notes that "If I was a rodent in wintertime," he'd want to be in the warmest place he could find, and a nice warm oil pipeline might fit that bill nicely. So again, look beyond oil spills: even if the pipeline functions just fine -- even if TransCanada's fantasy that its pipeline would never leak came true -- you get constant crop damage from increased noxious weeds and rodents.

Says Chris Hastings on TransCanada's assessment that the crop land lost will be "insignificant," "Land is a very precious commodity, and unlike oil, we are unable to produce any more of it." He also takes issue with testimony from TransCanada that landowners aren't in the best position to talk about the health and value of their land. Again, there's more evidence of how much (how little) respect TransCanada has for farmers.

Again, whom are you going to trust: oil execs with petrodollar signs in their eyes, or your friends and neighbors who have lived here for years, and who are committed to living here?

Chris says he doesn't want a pipeline, but if we have to have one, it ought to meet these criteria:

1. thicker pipe
   
2. deeper pipe
3. no pumping stations within five miles of residences
4. no more than one pipe now or ever
5. move away from the Middle James aquifer ("why jeopardize it?")
6. establish an emergency response fund -- $1M bond per tract of land acquired along the pipeline route, because who knows how much it will cost to clean up a spill or an explosion 10, 20, 50 years from now
   

Again, not an environmental radical, just a farmer concerned about the land and his neighbors.