Live tweets: Pipeline hearings start

Hearings begin this week for a controversial pipeline that would carry North Dakota crude from the Bakken oil patch through South Dakota and Iowa to a hub in Patoka, Illinois.

The Dakota Access Pipeline’s permit hearing before the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission will last two weeks in Pierre and see testimony from landowners, pipeline representatives and commission experts.

If permitted, the pipeline would carry as many as 550,000 barrels of oil under eastern South Dakota every day.

The PUC will have until December to make its final decision after the hearing, which begins Tuesday at 1 p.m. and will be live-streamed at puc.sd.gov.

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The decision could come earlier, but “ultimately, we’ll need to have our decision made by mid-December,” said PUC Chair Chris Nelson.

The PUC has taken public comments since Dakota Access filed its application last year, but the debate over the pipeline has heated up in recent weeks.

On Wednesday, Dakota Access announced it had awarded contracts to Michaels Pipeline Company and Precision Pipeline to construct multiple segments of the project. Fifty percent of the workers will be local, according to a company news release, and the two contractors have made commitments of $200 million to buy equipment from Caterpillar, Vermeer and John Deere.

The company has called the project a $3.78 billion investment that will create between 8,000 and 12,000 temporary jobs for welders, mechanics, pipefitters and heavy equipment operators. Letters of support from the construction companies are on file at the PUC.

Opponents, meanwhile, have placed seven billboards and signs throughout Lincoln and Minnehaha counties at locations under which the pipeline would run, in hopes of making the public aware of the pipeline’s proximity to population centers and eastern South Dakota’s productive cropland.

A march against the pipeline took place Saturday at Lyon Park. Opponents marched down Phillips Avenue to Falls Park, where speakers talked about the upcoming hearing and their concerns over potential leaks, water contamination and other issues.

“We really want people to be aware of what’s going to happen with this pipeline hearing,” said Peggy Hoogestraat, a landowner and vocal opponent of the project.

Many of the landowners who’ve signed on as parties to the permit hearing, including Hoogestraat and several others sued by Dakota Access earlier this year in an effort to gain surveying authority, will testify on Oct. 6.

Hundreds of pages of maps, expert lists and answers to questions from parties to the hearing on the scope of the project are available online on the PUC’s website, which is still taking comments from the public in the run-up to the hearing.