Farmer’s Restraining Order Against Keystone XL Pipeline Reinstated
Photo by Flickr user pedrosimoes7/Creative Commons
The reinstated restraining order prevents the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline from entering a Texas farmer's land.
Just a week ago, a temporary restraining order taken out by a farmer in northeast Texas against the company building the Keystone XL pipeline was dissolved. But late on Friday this week, that restraining order was reinstated by an appellate court.
The landowner fighting the pipeline is Julia Trigg Crawford, who owns a farm in Lamar County, northeast of Dallas. As we reported in an earlier story, her family has been there since the forties, where they grow soybeans, corn and wheat. A few years back, TransCanada approached her family about running the Keystone XL pipeline through her farm. The controversial pipeline would take unconventional oil deposits from Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas. “Well, we didn’t sign initially, and it’s kinda drug on and on,” she told StateImpact Texas. “Each year they sent another letter saying there’ll be more money to kinda sweeten the pot.”
After Crawford repeatedly refused to allow TransCanada onto her land, the company sought eminent domain last fall. Crawford is appealing that claim of eminent domain in a court hearing scheduled for late April.
In the meantime, she sought a temprorary restraining order against the company. Just days after the restraining order was removed last week, the company announced it intended to go ahead and start construction on a southern portion of the pipeline from Cushing, Oklahoma to Port Arthur, Texas.
The reinstated restraining order this week from the Court of Appeals, Sixth Appellate District in Texarkana says that TransCanada “is restrained from entering on the Crawford Family Farm Partnership land and from performing any and all on-site activities that disturb the surface or subsurface of the land.” TransCanada has five days to respond to the restraining order.
Read the full restraining order against TransCanada:
We’ll add comment from Crawford and TransCanada as it comes in.
Read more:
- This Land Was Your Land, Now It’s Our Land: Keystone XL and Eminent Domain
- Keystone XL Company Goes to Court Against Farmer
- The Pipeline vs. the Farmer: What Happens Next for Keystone XL in Texas
- Farmer Loses Restraining Order Against Keystone XL Pipeline
- The Keystone XL Pipeline is Coming to Texas
- Everything You Need to Know About the Keystone XL Pipeline
