South Dakota approves lapsed Keystone permit application

The South Dakota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) voted unanimously on Jan. 5 to approve TransCanada’s expired permit application for the Keystone XL pipeline.

To be built, the pipeline would need permits from each of the states through which it passes. It would also need a presidential permit, because it crosses international borders.

However, President Obama already denied that presidential permit in a speech in November, citing concerns about climate change as his major reason. The construction of Keystone XL “would not serve the national interest of the United States,” he told national and international audiences. The President’s rejection ended TransCanada’s 7-year attempt to build Keystone XL and upend farmers, ranchers, landowners, and tribal members in the process.

Despite Obama’s rejection, however–and despite the fact that TransCanada’s South Dakota permit application expired in 2014–the PUC voted to approve the company’s permit just last week, in a move called “deeply disappointing” by rancher and Dakota Rural Action member Paul Seamans. “South Dakota landowners have been fighting TransCanada and their use of eminent domain for over seven years now; you’d think our state commission would represent the people on this, rather than paving the way for corporate interests.”

The PUC approved TransCanada’s permit despite days’ worth of testimony from opponents and intervenors stating that the company is incapable of fulfilling its permit conditions. At a 9-day hearing last summer, intervenors presented extensive amounts of evidence to that effect, much of it concerned with TransCanada’s proven track record of disregarding pipeline construction code.

Many of the documents in question were obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests, and referred to unpublicized incidents along the already-constructed portion of the pipeline. In one such incident, the pipeline had become heavily corroded, and, by consequence, came dangerously close to rupturing. The point of corrosion was close to St. Louis and the Missouri River, meaning that a pipeline rupture would have contaminated a major drinking water source for millions of people.

The South Dakota intervention plan to appeal the PUC’s decision. “It’s not over yet,” Robin Martinez, one of the lawyers for the intervenors, told DeSmog Blog in an email. “With today’s decision, the next stage will involve the courts.”