She stands up to Keystone.

• Author: Hightower, Jim
• Position: Vox Populist - Julia Trigg Crawford is fighting TransCanada from grabbing her land

Most state and national officials have been as useless as a Jell-O doorstop in blocking the Keystone XL Pipeline.

The fix seemed to be in for TransCanada Corporation and its 800,000 barrels a day of toxic sludge, which would glop their way down to the Texas Gulf Coast.

But the tar sands cabal overlooked one factor: feisty locals.

Julia Trigg Crawford personifies the populist spirit that has galvanized the movement against Keystone.

Worried about the likelihood of tar sands oil contaminating the creek that crosses her farm and irrigates her crops, she rejected TransCanada's $21,626 offer in 2011 to buy a permanent easement across her land and water. No problem, said the corporation, we'll just take your property.

Huh?

Yes, Texas law graciously hands the public's power of eminent domain to private pipeline firms so they can grab what they want, usually for a lowball price. However, to get this extraordinary power, the grabsters must be "common carriers," meaning their pipes are essentially public, available to all users. But TransCanada would use its pipeline solely for private gain, so it is not entitled to seize land by exercising the state's power. Yet, it is doing just that.

How does it get away with such arrogance? Through a loophole big enough to ram a 345-mile pipe right down the throat of Texans. Benighted state "regulators" allow a corporation to--get this--designate itself as a common carrier. Just check a box on a one-page form. That's it. The state blithely accepts the corporation's word. No questions asked.

It gets weirder. Rather than negotiate with the Crawfords, TransCanada lawyers slipped into court and filed condemnation papers on a chunk of their farm. This filing is called a hearing, but it's just a paper shuffle. No evidence is presented, and landowners are not invited, much less heard. So TransCanada's petition to condemn was rubberstamped before the Crawfords knew what hit them. A "forever" easement handed control of the land in question to the corporation, and the family is banned from building roads or anything else on it. The only way for victims to regain control is to sue the company and win--no small hill, for you must...