No pipeline in my backyard!

Last week you met some angry landowners in Wood County who are in the path of a proposed oil pipeline from Canada.
A new citizen group called S.T.O.P. or Stop the Tarsands Oil Pipeline, was organized in Winnsboro. Landowners who don’t want a pipeline under their property have vowed to fight it.
 

The pipeline company says, many of their fears are unfounded. But as we have learned, ultimately, it may not matter…
 

The Keystone Pipeline is already underway in the northern part of the country, and the segments through Oklahoma and Texas are the last legs of the project to bring oil from the Canadian Tarsands, or Oilsands, as the company prefers to call them.
 

It’s not really oil as we know it, but a semi-solid that must be mixed with other chemicals to be fluid enough to be piped, and that is one worry the landowners have.
 

The other is that TransCanada, has the power of eminent domain. That’s because in Texas, an oil or gas pipeline is considered a community benefit like a highway or a park.
 

And even though it is a private enterprise, the company has the power to take the easements they need.
 

But a spokesman for TransCanada says, that’s not the way they do business…
 

"When we make a financial commitment to a landowner," Spokesman James Prescott told us, "as if we are buying their property, and we get limited rights to it, we get access to it, we’re not buying it. It’s still theirs to do with as they see fit. And we’ve already acquired easements from two thirds of the landowners on the route in Texas. And we’re on the hook. It’s our risk, not theirs.”

Tonight at 10, we’ll here more from TransCanada on what chemicals are involved, and how safe this project is going to be if it were to be running under your land.