Deja vu, again

This is hardly the first time some Canadian commodies firm has been accused of running rough-shod over some rural community’s traditional rights and is being seen as land grabbers and environmental despoilers.  But, what’s different about Trans-Canada’s plans to pump crude from Alberta tar-sands to the Gulf of Mexico is that the tribesmen are a bit hard to write off as a bunch of “socialist dupes” and “starry eyed environmentalists” the the Canadians come up against east Texas “Tea Party” and handgun owners.  From The Guardian:

…environmental concerns alone did not turn Daniel’s neighbours against the pipeline. They claim that bullying did.

Locals in east Texas accuse TransCanada’s agents of threatening them with compulsory purchase and of dismissing their concerns about safety in case of a leak.

“They just laid some papers down on the table and said: ‘Read these papers. We have eminent domain.’ That scared me nearly to death,” said Susan Scott, who blames her heart attack on the stress.

Daniel said the company did not bother to notify him when it sent the first survey team to his property in 2008. A neighbour told him outsiders had been on his land. He found surveyors’ stakes with flags reading PL. “My heart was just falling,” he said. “I knew that meant pipeline.”

The anger spread to Tea Party conservatives, the local chapter of Hawks – which stands for Handguns Are Worth Keeping Sacred – and even those who owed their fortunes to oil. “I had nothing against it at first,” said Eleanor Fairchild. Her late husband headed international exploration for Hunt oil, and she has an abandoned pipeline on her 300 acres of land, which is wooded with oak, pine and sweetgum trees and fed by its own springs.

“It was later I found out about the pollution and I got involved with this environmental stuff. They don’t tell you it is not a regular pipeline, or that the pipeline is so thin, or that the grit going down there is going to wear out the pipeline.”

Fairchild said she got angry when TransCanada’s lawyers told her she had no choice but to agree on their terms.