This week is a critical moment in the fight to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, so let’s take a step back and look at where we are now, and what’s coming next:
The proposed Keystone XL pipeline, backed by a Canadian oil company called TransCanada, would transport 830,000 barrels per day of toxic tar sands through communities, vulnerable natural resources, and Tribal lands to the Gulf Coast for export. Over the last seven years, an incredible movement has come together to stop the pipeline, and in November 2015 President Obama rejected it. As you know, the fight unfortunately did not end there. Just days after taking office, Donald Trump gave Keystone XL new life by signing an executive order to expedite the pipeline’s permit, and a few months later the State Department granted approval to the permit application. State based their approval on an outdated and incomplete environmental review from 2014, which, among other flaws, assumed there would be a need for the pipeline based on oil prices about double what they currently are and did not account for the recent abandonment of the tar sands by major oil companies, leaving no need for a new tar sands pipeline.
But Donald Trump doesn’t have the final authority over whether or not Keystone XL gets built. TransCanada still does not have the permit it needs to build through Nebraska, so now the final decision is up to the Nebraska Public Service Commission (PSC), which is tasked with determining whether the pipeline is in Nebraska’s best interest.
Over the last few months, the PSC has held four public hearings across the state, where citizens have had the opportunity to voice their concerns about the pipeline. These hearings were packed, and opponents of the pipeline outnumbered supporters two-to-one every time. The hearings have been incredibly moving. Hundreds of people have testified about the threat this pipeline would pose to Nebraska’s land and water. They’ve talked about how TransCanada would be allowed to use eminent domain to force landowners to let them build across land their families have been on for generations, leaving them with all the liability in case of a spill. They’ve discussed studies that show just one spill from the pipeline into the Ogallala Aquifer could threaten drinking water for millions of people and how pipeline construction would threaten the continued existence of the endangered whooping crane as a species. And they’ve reminded the PSC that, even though the pipeline would cut directly through Sioux treaty lands and near several other tribal reservations and the Ponca Trail of Tears, Tribal Nations in Nebraska and South Dakota have still not been properly consulted.
Now, during intervenor hearings over the next week, the PSC will hear from expert witnesses and intervenors - people the commission has recognized have a vested interest in whether or not the pipeline gets built - about the pipeline’s impacts. Experts will discuss the threat the pipeline would pose to Nebraska’s natural resources and endangered species, and landowners and Tribal leaders will have an opportunity to present evidence that this pipeline would be a disaster for their communities and their way of life.
TransCanada will also have witnesses there, who will try to sell the PSC on why the pipeline is needed, even though TransCanada has struggled to line up customers for the pipeline and many in the industry believe the project is unnecessary. They’ll also probably make the case that the pipeline would be safe, even though a University of Nebraska study estimated that the pipeline would likely have as many as 90 significant spills over its 50-year lifespan.
Throughout the week, pipeline fighters will be there making our voices heard in opposition to this terrible project. On Sunday, we’ll march through the streets of Lincoln and rally outside the Nebraska State Capitol. Then on Tuesday, representatives from the Intertribal Coalition of Nebraska and the Ponca Nation of Oklahoma will come together to join other Indigenous Nations from across the U.S. and Canada in signing the Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion. Finally, ahead of the final deadline for public comments, we’ll deliver over 100,000 comments to the PSC from Nebraskans and pipeline fighters across the country, urging the PSC to reject Keystone XL.
The PSC will then take all the information that was presented throughout the hearings and all the public comments, and make a decision on whether or not to allow TransCanada to build. We’re expecting that decision to come sometime this fall.