TransCanada Chicanery

[Transcanada asked Texas farmer Julia Trigg Crawford] if they could have an easement across her land in order to build a piece [...] the Keystone XL pipeline, the elongated death-funnel designed to bring the world's filthiest fossil fuel from an ecological moonscape in Alberta, down the middle of the North American continent, and eventually to Texas, where what product hasn't already spilled out all over the landscape, poisoning watersheds and murdering ducks, will be put on tankers and sold to the entire world. [...] Pipelines leak and oil companies lie, and that is generally a bad combination all the way around for farmers. […Crawford] told them, the guy in the next farm over would be more than happy to let you run your pipeline over his land. Go ask him! No, TransCanada told her, we want to build our death-funnel across your property and, taking advantage of the ludicrous Texas permit system, that's pretty much what they did.

[...]

(Perhaps the most preposterous moment came when some archaeologists found 145 ancient artifacts of the Caddo Indian tribe in one of Julia's pastures. The Texas Historical Commission told her that the entire pasture probably qualified to be included in the National Registry Of Historic Places — the entire pasture, that is, except for the exact sliver through which TransCanada wanted to run the pipeline [...] )

[...]

You will not be shocked to learn that the Private Property Rights Protection Act has a loophole that will allow TransCanada to keep taking people's land to build its pipeline. What is hanging fire now is the stretch of pipeline running from the Canadian border to Oklahoma. That's the portion of the project that still is awaiting the president's decision. TransCanada simply split off the southern leg of the project, renamed it the Keystone Gulf Coast Project, and went on beavering away across people's property, which it would be able to do even if the act in question passed.

  Charlie Pierce

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.