TransCanada is threatening eminent domain if Nebraska landowners refuse to sign KXL contracts. Dave Domina's response? "Go ahead TransCanada, give it a try. Make our day."
Sign right-of-way contracts or face condemnation proceedings. That's the warning TransCanada has been giving Nebraska landowners. The only remaining Keystone XL pipeline holdouts are in Nebraska. These people have refused to sign over the rights to their land so that TransCanada can build its KXL pipeline.
According to Andrew Craig, the manager of TransCanada's Omaha base, TransCanada "would prefer not to initiate the process" while the future of the pipeline is still uncertain, but they "are bound by that deadline" - that deadline being January 22, 2015. After this deadline passes, landowners will have to go to court over their land because they will no longer have the option of signing right-of-way contracts. Why January 22? That date marks two years since Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman gave TransCanada the go-ahead to begin eminent domain proceedings.
However, and this is a huge however, if the Nebraska Supreme Court affirms the Lancaster County District Court's ruling that found LB 1161 (the bill that allowed Gov. Heineman to approve the pipeline's route) unconstitutional, the entire issue would be moot.
In response to TransCanada's eminent domain consideration, Dave Domina had this to say –
"They are relying on a statute that has been declared unconstitutional, and they have an argument pending before the Supreme Court in which those issues are fully framed. I don't think their position has even remote credibility."
Adding, "Go ahead TransCanada…Make our day."
Read this article as it appeared in the Lincoln Journal Star.