We are deeply disappointed by the decision reached Tuesday by the Public Utilities Commission. The Keystone XL pipeline will not be built. President Barack Obama rejected the Presidential Permit last year, and actions Wednesday by TransCanada to sue the United States suggest the company has given up on the project. The Commission’s decision to not deny certification of the South Dakota permit leaves landowners crossed by the route in a never-ending limbo.
Further, we cannot accept the Commission’s argument that TransCanada needed to do nothing more than file a few pieces of paper in order to certify their permit and meet their burden of proof. For the Commission to suggest this, and in the same hearing to suggest the pages of evidence and hours of testimony by the intervenors was “inadequate” in showing the company cannot meet the permit conditions, is unacceptable. Chairman Chris Nelson’s assertion that “nothing presented by the opponents proves the permit conditions cannot continue to be met” is inaccurate, and it is our belief that this assessment will be reversed on appeal.
Finally, we are deeply disappointed by some of Chairman Nelson’s statements during the hearing about South Dakota’s Indigenous peoples. The Chairman singled out the Tribes and individual Native intervenors and stated that while he identified with the ranchers who intervened, he did not with his “Native American friends” and for much of the process did not understand why they felt so passionately opposed to Keystone XL. Whether or not he intended it, his language was patronizing, offensive, and racist, and we have asked him to apologize.