On his first day in office, President Biden revoked the cross-border permit that former President Trump had issued to the Canadian company, TC Energy, formerly TransCanada, to build the Keystone XL pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, down through the Midwest. The pipeline would have brought 830,000 barrels per day of the dirtiest energy source on the planet down to the Gulf Coast for refining.
On June 9, the company finally threw in the towel, ending its more than decade-long quest to build the controversial pipeline. The fight to stop KXL became the biggest fight in the U.S. against dirty energy linked to climate change, involving tens of thousands more who marched and rallied and thousands who were arrested in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience.
Much of the organized opposition was centered in Nebraska. Art Tanderup is a Nebraska farmer who became involved in in the movement to stop KXL in May 2012, when he learned the pipeline route went through his farm. Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Tanderup about how they achieved their victory, solidarity with opponents of ongoing pipeline projects, and the work that remains.
ART TANDERUP: You know, we have the farmers, the ranchers and the Native Americans that all worked together. And then we had the environmental groups that all came in as well as individuals who are concerned about climate change, who are concerned about destroying the earth with tar sands. All these people came together to work together to fight this thing. And here in Nebraska, we’ve been the persistent ones. They thought they would just come in here and slap this thing in the ground. You know, we haven’t let them do that. So it’s been an interesting time and interesting battle to help save the earth and to protect the people and so forth. And, especially the water. You know, right here where we live, we’re right over the Ogallala aquifer or just a few feet above it. And any leak in that pipeline would get into that aquifer and could never be cleaned up. So that has been the greatest motivator for the people in the Midwest here fighting this pipeline.
MELINDA TUHUS: Ultimately, it was a huge battle. It lasted, you know, 10 years or so. And now people are fighting (Enbridge) Line 3, which is another Canadian tar sands pipeline. Exactly the same thing. And it’s about the same capacity as KXL would have been. Do you have any thoughts about what they could do to bring about the same result that you got with KXL?
ART TANDERUP: We need to convince President Biden to stop all these tar sands pipelines. And a new coalition has been formed. Jane Kleeb from Bold Nebraska has been up in Minnesota, working with the people on the ground up there. And it’s basically, you know, lessons that we learned from KXL. How did we win this battle against KXL? What things did we do here in Nebraska and South Dakota that you can do up here in Minnesota?
MELINDA TUHUS: Can you share any of the things that Jane Kleeb is sharing with people up in Minnesota in terms of what worked?
ART TANDERUP: You build a barn in the path of the pipeline. You have a concert in my cornfield. You create huge crop arts that send messages out to the world. You plant sacred corn. You do other types of resistance that gets media attention and it catches them off guard. You know, for them to counter it. It’s like they have to come up with a new playbook as well. You’ve got to let people know that they have something to believe in and they have power.
MELINDA TUHUS: Art Tanderup, are there any issues left unresolved?
ART TANDERUP: TransCanada is continuing to take easements on landowners that haven’t given them easements in Nebraska. So why do they want to do that? You know, we can only guess. They want to sell the route. You know, is it to a company like Enbridge? Is it to a country like China or Saudi Arabia? They have something in mind here. They want that route complete so that it is saleable and it’s very possible if they can get it complete, that they will get basically their entire investment out of this in the sale of it. So we are in court. They have admitted they are no longer building this pipeline. There is no reason for them to have eminent domain anymore. They were given eminent domain powers for this pipeline. Not for anything else. You need to jerk every permit that they have and it needs to be over with.
For more information, visit Bold Nebraska’s website at boldnebraska.org.
