Pipeline pain reaches Corridor
Mississippi Stand protesters Abby Mills, St. Louis, and Ruby Montoya, California, exhibit a sense of humor at their camp south of Montrose in Lee County. Up to 300 locals and out-of-state protesters employed measures ranging from signs to civil disobedience to locking themselves to construction equipment in an effort to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline’s crossing under the Mississippi River. Emery Styron photo.
Nov. 7, 2016, Corridor Business Journal
By Emery Styron
“I’m just a little old tater in a great big frying pan,” said Lee County landowner Hugh E. Tweedy of his losing battle to keep Dakota Access from using eminent domain to run its pipeline through his property. The land is in a trust for his adult children, but he doubts they’ll ever pick up the check for the easement waiting at the sheriff’s office.
Iowa Citians Richard and Cheryl Lamb are no happier with the $160,000 they received the pipeline’s slash across the center of their Boone County farm. “It’s an enormous gash on the land,” says Mr. Lamb, a retired ACT manager.
Mr. Tweedy and the Lambs are two of 14 plaintiffs in a suit challenging the Iowa Utilities Board’s decision last spring to allow Dakota Access to use the state’s power of eminent domain to secure easements for the four-state pipeline’s 342-mile path through Iowa. The 1,172-mile conduit crosses the state from its northwest to southwest corner, cutting a similar diagonal path across the Lambs’ farm near Ames.
Oral arguments begin Dec. 15 in the suit filed in Polk County District Court. Whatever the verdict, “it is almost a given,” the case will be appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court level, said Bill Hanigan, the Des Moines attorney for the plaintiffs. In similar cases in other states, supreme courts are finding for the landowners, but a divergence of opinion among states could motivate the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the case, he said.
This suit turns on “the takings clauses” in the U.S. and Iowa constitutions and a 2006 Iowa law intended to protect farmland. The federal and state constitutions prohibit the government from appropriating private property except for a public purpose and just compensation. “Our objection is not over compensation but whether this is a public purpose,” said Mr. Hannigan.
Dakota Access “is a private company that offers Iowa no services whatever,” Mr. Lamb added. “We’re angered. We feel betrayed by our state government. We feel they were simply bought off by campaign contributions.”
“In respect to the 2006 bill, we believe to take farmland for private use, you have to be a utility,” Mr. Hanigan said. “Crude oil is not a utilities commodity and consumers or utilities can’t use crude oil.”
In its March 10 decision, the IUB noted that Section 479B of the Iowa Code allows it to grant permits for construction, operation and maintenance of hazardous liquid pipelines if “the board determines that the proposed services will promote the public convenience and necessity.” The statute also states that a “pipeline company granted a permit shall be vested with the right of eminent domain, to the extent necessary and as prescribed and approved by the board.”
Dakota Access argued that need was verified in the open market by shippers who had signed “take or pay” contracts for 90 percent of the pipeline volume and that the statute definition of “pipeline” as “an interstate pipe or pipeline” means the public convenience and necessity standard cannot be interpreted to require that the pipeline must provide service to the public in Iowa.
“The use of eminent domain is an option of last resort for the company,” Vicki Granado, spokesperson for Energy Transfer Partners, the project owner, told the CBJ. “It is only used in cases where an agreement cannot be negotiated. As a company, we are proud of our efforts which have yielded a track record of negotiating easement agreements with at least 90 percent of the landowners whom we have worked.”
Mr. Hanigan counters that the term “voluntary” as it applies to easements “should be in quotation marks,” as the threat of condemnation induces many landowners to accept company offers.
The Lambs have filed a separate lawsuit challenging the amount they received for the easement. “It’s sickening, really, to see what they’ve done,” said Mr. Lamb, noting the farm has been in his wife’s family since the 1870s. “We’ve tried everything we could to be good stewards. This is contrary to everything we’ve tried to accomplish.” He said most of the topsoil was put back in place, but the layers below created by centuries of decaying prairie grass “are all mixed together.” He expects a drop in productivity of the land for decades.
Mr. Tweedy celebrates the fact that he was able to keep the pipeline work below ground where it crossed the back 40 acres of his property. “I’ll take a small victory in that it’s line-bored under; It’s not in my DNA to be forced to do anything,” said the former Libertarian candidate for state representative.
A few miles east of Mr. Tweedy’s farm, protesters have been encamped for weeks near the site where Dakota Access is boring a tunnel for the pipeline beneath the Mississippi River. Mr. Tweedy said he hears the boring machinery running 24 hours per day.
Like the Lambs, he’s has joined in protests against the pipeline. The Lambs say they would oppose it even if they didn’t have property involved due to concerns over “fracking, dependence on fossil fuels limiting America’s energy independence” and spills “loaded with carcinogens.”
Mr. Tweedy said, “Initially I wasn’t so much anti-pipeline as I was anti-eminent domain. After looking at this, I think it is risky business. The benefit to risk ratio just does not add up — a 30-inch pipeline under every major waterway in Iowa at pressure of 1,700 pounds per square inch.”
Ms. Granado said pipeline safety “is our top priority” and that “design, construction and operation of the Dakota Access Pipeline will meet or exceed where possible all state and federal safety standards.” The company’s lines are monitored 24 hours per day, 365 days per year by control centers with the capability to remotely shut lines within minutes, she said.
The pipeline begins in the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota and crosses South Dakota, entering the state in Lyon County in far northwest Iowa. The route terminates at Patoka, Illiniois, where it will connect to an existing pipeline carrying crude oil to the Gulf of Mexico.
Construction is “well underway” in Iowa and more than 70 percent complete overall, she said, despite ongoing protests by the Standing Rock Sioux and hundreds of other Native American tribes over alleged desecration of sacred sites and threats to water quality in the Dakotas.
By Emery Styron
“I’m just a little old tater in a great big frying pan,” said Lee County landowner Hugh E. Tweedy of his losing battle to keep Dakota Access from using eminent domain to run its pipeline through his property. The land is in a trust for his adult children, but he doubts they’ll ever pick up the check for the easement waiting at the sheriff’s office.
Iowa Citians Richard and Cheryl Lamb are no happier with the $160,000 they received the pipeline’s slash across the center of their Boone County farm. “It’s an enormous gash on the land,” says Mr. Lamb, a retired ACT manager.
Mr. Tweedy and the Lambs are two of 14 plaintiffs in a suit challenging the Iowa Utilities Board’s decision last spring to allow Dakota Access to use the state’s power of eminent domain to secure easements for the four-state pipeline’s 342-mile path through Iowa. The 1,172-mile conduit crosses the state from its northwest to southwest corner, cutting a similar diagonal path across the Lambs’ farm near Ames.
Oral arguments begin Dec. 15 in the suit filed in Polk County District Court. Whatever the verdict, “it is almost a given,” the case will be appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court level, said Bill Hanigan, the Des Moines attorney for the plaintiffs. In similar cases in other states, supreme courts are finding for the landowners, but a divergence of opinion among states could motivate the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the case, he said.
This suit turns on “the takings clauses” in the U.S. and Iowa constitutions and a 2006 Iowa law intended to protect farmland. The federal and state constitutions prohibit the government from appropriating private property except for a public purpose and just compensation. “Our objection is not over compensation but whether this is a public purpose,” said Mr. Hannigan.
Dakota Access “is a private company that offers Iowa no services whatever,” Mr. Lamb added. “We’re angered. We feel betrayed by our state government. We feel they were simply bought off by campaign contributions.”
“In respect to the 2006 bill, we believe to take farmland for private use, you have to be a utility,” Mr. Hanigan said. “Crude oil is not a utilities commodity and consumers or utilities can’t use crude oil.”
In its March 10 decision, the IUB noted that Section 479B of the Iowa Code allows it to grant permits for construction, operation and maintenance of hazardous liquid pipelines if “the board determines that the proposed services will promote the public convenience and necessity.” The statute also states that a “pipeline company granted a permit shall be vested with the right of eminent domain, to the extent necessary and as prescribed and approved by the board.”
Dakota Access argued that need was verified in the open market by shippers who had signed “take or pay” contracts for 90 percent of the pipeline volume and that the statute definition of “pipeline” as “an interstate pipe or pipeline” means the public convenience and necessity standard cannot be interpreted to require that the pipeline must provide service to the public in Iowa.
“The use of eminent domain is an option of last resort for the company,” Vicki Granado, spokesperson for Energy Transfer Partners, the project owner, told the CBJ. “It is only used in cases where an agreement cannot be negotiated. As a company, we are proud of our efforts which have yielded a track record of negotiating easement agreements with at least 90 percent of the landowners whom we have worked.”
Mr. Hanigan counters that the term “voluntary” as it applies to easements “should be in quotation marks,” as the threat of condemnation induces many landowners to accept company offers.
The Lambs have filed a separate lawsuit challenging the amount they received for the easement. “It’s sickening, really, to see what they’ve done,” said Mr. Lamb, noting the farm has been in his wife’s family since the 1870s. “We’ve tried everything we could to be good stewards. This is contrary to everything we’ve tried to accomplish.” He said most of the topsoil was put back in place, but the layers below created by centuries of decaying prairie grass “are all mixed together.” He expects a drop in productivity of the land for decades.
Mr. Tweedy celebrates the fact that he was able to keep the pipeline work below ground where it crossed the back 40 acres of his property. “I’ll take a small victory in that it’s line-bored under; It’s not in my DNA to be forced to do anything,” said the former Libertarian candidate for state representative.
A few miles east of Mr. Tweedy’s farm, protesters have been encamped for weeks near the site where Dakota Access is boring a tunnel for the pipeline beneath the Mississippi River. Mr. Tweedy said he hears the boring machinery running 24 hours per day.
Like the Lambs, he’s has joined in protests against the pipeline. The Lambs say they would oppose it even if they didn’t have property involved due to concerns over “fracking, dependence on fossil fuels limiting America’s energy independence” and spills “loaded with carcinogens.”
Mr. Tweedy said, “Initially I wasn’t so much anti-pipeline as I was anti-eminent domain. After looking at this, I think it is risky business. The benefit to risk ratio just does not add up — a 30-inch pipeline under every major waterway in Iowa at pressure of 1,700 pounds per square inch.”
Ms. Granado said pipeline safety “is our top priority” and that “design, construction and operation of the Dakota Access Pipeline will meet or exceed where possible all state and federal safety standards.” The company’s lines are monitored 24 hours per day, 365 days per year by control centers with the capability to remotely shut lines within minutes, she said.
The pipeline begins in the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota and crosses South Dakota, entering the state in Lyon County in far northwest Iowa. The route terminates at Patoka, Illiniois, where it will connect to an existing pipeline carrying crude oil to the Gulf of Mexico.
Construction is “well underway” in Iowa and more than 70 percent complete overall, she said, despite ongoing protests by the Standing Rock Sioux and hundreds of other Native American tribes over alleged desecration of sacred sites and threats to water quality in the Dakotas.
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A security guard passes time with his cell phone as crews and equipment behind him bore under the Mississippi River for the Dakota Access pipeline in Lee County. The 1,172-mile pipeline runs from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota to a terminal in Patoka, Illinois. Emery Styron photo.
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