Northern Plains has long worked to help landowners protect themselves from the abuse of eminent domain for private development projects. In 2000, we published a report on the experiences of 18 Montana families who faced condemnation of their land from projects with questionable public benefits. In the 2001 legislature, we were able to secure passage of four bills aimed at improving the rights of landowners facing condemnation.
We have also worked to help residents of small communities protect the most valuable qualities of the places where they live. We published a guidebook, Creating a Citizen Initiated Zoning District, and also compiled a list of relevant questions for citizens to use at public forums and meetings, in order to help keep out-of-control growth on the public agenda in their communities.
In 2009, Northern Plains began working with landowners whose farms and ranches lie in the path of the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, a project that will carry tar sands bitumen from Alberta to Texas for refining. The original proposal for the pipeline requested that the Canadian company behind the project requested a waiver that would allow the company to use thinner gauge steel for the pipe in relation to the pressure in areas of “low consequence,” that is, rural areas. In 2009-10, Northern Plains organized the Northern Plains Pipeline Landowners Group to help affected landowners learn more about the likely impacts of the project and to negotiate as a bloc when the pipeline company sought to cross their lands.
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