NE Supreme Court Digs Into Keystone: Did Governor Exceed His Authority In Approving Route?
Nebraska’s supreme court heard arguments on Friday about whether Governor Dave Heineman acted properly when he blessed a route for the Keystone XL oil pipeline, and the court’s decision could weigh on the controversial project. A lawyer for landowners who may be in the pipeline’s path hoped to persuade the seven-member panel that Heineman overreached and that a decision on the route should be left to an independent state agency.
The 30-minute hearing played out in the court’s somber wood-paneled chamber. Keystone opponents who watched the proceedings from an adjacent room, were not so subdued. “It just makes sense, how can they not see that,” said Shannon Graves, a Nebraska landowner who opposes the plan and was in the viewing room.
At issue was a 2012 law that gave Heineman authority to approve a route for TransCanada Corp’s proposed $5.4bn pipeline. The project, which would connect Western Canada’s oil sands region with Texas refineries, is now in a sixth year of debate. Siting issues are typically a matter for the state’s Public Services Commission (PSC) but the legislature authorized Heineman to settle the Keystone issue and he blessed a route for the 1,700-mile pipeline early last year. Nebraska law tolerates that kind of intervention from its legislature, argued Katherine Spohn, deputy attorney general. “The constitution, on its face, allows the legislature to limit the PSC’s authority,” she told the seven-judge panel.
But landowners opposed to Keystone argue that by personally authorizing a route, the governor robbed the PSC of its oversight role and an objective standard to weigh a decision. “The statute is standardless,” Dave Domina, lawyer for landowner opponents of Keystone, told justices. Domina is a Democratic candidate for US Senate. A final word from the court, expected by early next year, will restart a bureaucratic process in both Nebraska and Washington that began more than five years ago.
EDIT
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/05/nebraska-supreme-court-keystone-lawsuit
