ROSEBUD INDIAN RESERVATION, S.D. — In early 2010, the South Dakota government gave its blessing to a Canadian company seeking to move crude oil in a pipeline beneath the American heartland. Opposition had been minimal.
“We didn’t know about it,” said Faith Spotted Eagle, the chairwoman of the Yankton Sioux Tribe’s treaty council. “It was real swift and quiet.”
But in the years since, the proposed pipeline, known as Keystone XL, has become the object of a national debate, and Ms. Spotted Eagle has emerged as a leader of an increasingly organized coalition of Native Americans, landowners and grass-roots groups seeking to block its construction in this state and elsewhere. So much time has elapsed that the 2010 construction permit is now up for recertification, requiring a new round of hearings expected to pit South Dakota activists against pipeline supporters eager for construction to begin.
“These kinds of things in history have been more procedural in nature,” said Mark Cooper, a spokesman for TransCanada, the company proposing Keystone XL. “But I think the new reality is that opponents of the pipeline will do anything they can do to slow progress.”
The process in South Dakota is playing out amid a much broader debate about Keystone XL, which would run 1,179 miles from Alberta’s vast fields of oil sands, with the capacity to carry an estimated 800,000 barrels of oil per day to southern Nebraska, connecting to existing pipelines. The project has stoked passions on both sides. Many Republicans in Congress and business groups see it as an economic necessity. Opponents fear the possibility of a leak, an influx of temporary workers into their communities, and the environmental consequences of petroleum use. Now, more than six years after it was proposed, the project remains hobbled by bureaucratic hurdles and legal challenges.
In Nebraska, long a hotbed of pipeline opposition, some landowners along the proposed route have gone to court to challenge eminent domain proceedings. On the federal level, President Obama’s permission is required because the pipeline would cross a national border. Mr. Obama has put off making a decision until the State Department finishes its review of the project, and he infuriated conservatives by vetoing legislation to approve it.
For years, South Dakota had been mostly an afterthought in the permit battle. But emboldened by the coming hearing and the success of protesters elsewhere, some South Dakotans say their state could be another barrier to construction. That goal has frustrated many pipeline supporters in the state, including all three members of its congressional delegation, who say they are satisfied with TransCanada’s assurances that the pipeline would be safe.
“Keystone XL has allowed this conversation, this resistance against oil development, tar sands development, to take place on a national scale, on a scale that hasn’t happened before,” said Dallas Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network, a group opposed to Keystone XL that works with tribal governments.
Among the most consistent and vocal opponents here have been Native Americans, by far the largest minority group in the state with about 9 percent of the population. They plan to challenge the route’s recertification this summer when it goes before the State Public Utilities Commission in a hearing that begins July 27. They contend that the project has changed since 2010, and that the company should have to start the permitting process from scratch, rather than seek a renewal.
TransCanada says the 313-mile route through South Dakota would steer clear of reservations and tribally owned lands. But on the expansive Rosebud Indian Reservation, the path would be much closer than many are comfortable with. Even if the pipeline would not cross their property, tribal leaders say, it would pose a threat to drinking water and to ancestral homelands on the rolling plains and hilly riverbeds where they still hold treaty claims.
“We’re so frustrated to the point of breaking,” said Wayne Frederick, a Rosebud Sioux tribal council member.
So strong is their opposition that members have maintained a spirit camp on tribal property near the planned route. Despite the camp’s rustic accommodations — a tent, a trailer and no running water — members have kept a vigil there for more than a year, and have vowed to use the site as a base camp for protesters if construction ever begins. Several activists, including Mr. Frederick, have said they would risk arrest through civil disobedience.
At one point, Keystone XL’s path through South Dakota seemed a foregone conclusion. Unlike in Nebraska, the company quickly received a state permit and eventually secured rights to build. But as opposition spread elsewhere and delays mounted, an unlikely group of South Dakotans coalesced in opposition to the project.
Like other landowners along the proposed path, Paul Seamans signed an easement allowing TransCanada to build the pipeline on his land outside Draper, near the central part of the state. Mr. Seamans said he had qualms when he signed, but figured that the pipeline was going to be built anyway and that he should take the best price available.
After signing, Mr. Seamans soured further on the project, and began attending anti-pipeline meetings with Indian tribes. A grass-roots group he heads, Dakota Rural Action, has emerged as one of the state’s most vocal organizations opposing the pipeline. Mr. Seamans said he hoped the new alliance could stall the project.
To some in the state, the opposition has proved baffling. Several South Dakota politicians have signaled their support for Keystone XL, and some landowners along and near the route say they look forward to the tax revenue a pipeline would bring. Many also say they trust TransCanada’s repeated assurances that the project would be safe.
“I didn’t think it would drag out this doggone long,” said Tyrone Moos, a South Dakota farmer whose land is not along the route but who has leased some of his property to TransCanada for use during construction.“I have some concerns, too. But they swore up and down that if there’s any leaks or damage to the land, ‘We will take care of that.’ ”
Jim Doolittle, a rancher who raises cattle in the state’s northwestern corner, signed an easement with TransCanada early on. He said he has remained enthusiastic about the project. Though he has doubts that Mr. Obama will approve the project, Mr. Doolittle said he believes the permit will be recertified.
“I really don’t think that whenever this happens in South Dakota,” he said, “that it’s going to all of a sudden turn around.”
But Native American opponents portray the fight against Keystone XL as a necessary battle that transcends the pipeline issue.
Ms. Spotted Eagle, the Yankton Sioux official, said the pipeline violates her tribe’s treaty rights to land across wide swaths of South Dakota. To allow Keystone XL to go in the ground, she said, would not only imperil the water, but also serve as another affront to the state’s Native American population.
Ms. Spotted Eagle signaled that the outcome of the hearing this summer might not be the final word. If TransCanada’s South Dakota permit is recertified, she and other Native American leaders have said a lawsuit will probably follow.
“I think it’s going to be a spiritual victory,” Ms. Spotted Eagle said, “and we’re not going to back down.”
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