Legalectric

595 arrested so far… There’s been a lot online about opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline for Tar Sands oil.

TAR SANDS ACTION

I’m looking at all of this and I’m wondering where the resistance was to the MinnCan pipeline, just one of our own tar sands crude oil pipeline through Minnesota.  Why is the Keystone XL pipeline project special?  Why are people waking up about tar sands pipelines?  Is it because Keystone XL is a “Presidential Permit” project at the Dept. of State?

MPIRG helped some of the landowners affected by MinnCan organize after they got very late notice they were potentially affected, but they lost bigtime, were denied intervention status by the ALJ because they were “late,” and then after it was permitted, booted out of the Appellate Court because they were not formal intervenors.  As they were in condemnation court for the pipeline, they got notice that they were targeted for CapX 2020 transmission.  At that point they became dyed-in-the-wool activists and joined with NoCapX 2020 as intervenors, in the Certificate of Need case and subsequent routing dockets for CapX transmission across Minnesota, right now in the Hampton-LaCrosse CapX 2020 routing docket .

For more info, here’s the MinnCan routing docket at PUC:

http://energyfacilities.puc.state.mn.us/Docket.html?Id=18339

Here is a link to a post with the Appellate decision:

Appellate court affirms PUC in pipeline appeal

Here are county maps, from Clearwater Co. down to the refinery in Dakota County:

http://energyfacilities.puc.state.mn.us/resource.html?Id=19000

And the Certificate of Need, go hear and search for docket “06-02” (year-docket no.)

https://www.edockets.state.mn.us/EFiling/edockets/searchDocuments.do?method=showeDocketsSearch&searchType=new

Here’re some other tar sands pipelines in Minnesota, completed:

The “Alberta Clipper” pipeline project:

http://energyfacilities.puc.state.mn.us/Docket.html?Id=19203

And another Enbridge “Southern Lights” oil pipeline project

http://energyfacilities.puc.state.mn.us/Docket.html?Id=19133