The Battle Against the Keystone Pipeline

When Bishop balked, TransCanada took him to court again and won the right to take possession of a strip through his land. He appealed and eventually the two parties entered mediation. They finally arrived at a number he could stomach in November. "I had to get the best deal for my family I could get," says Bishop, who has a 16-year-old daughter.

But the more he dwelt on it, the madder he got. A powerful foreign corporation had taken by force what belonged to him, Bishop figured, so Canadians could get a better price for their crude. Now he flies his American flag upside down in a symbol of distress. He believes he is under siege, and as he looks out toward the county road, it is hard for him to forget it; two off-duty sheriff's deputies pulling guard duty for TransCanada are sitting in idling sheriff's office SUVs.

Photos by Brandon Thibodeaux

Members of the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department drag away a protester who chained himself to construction equipment.

Photos by Brandon Thibodeaux

A deputy uses pepper spray to drive away others gathered around a cherry picker used to extract protesters on platforms in 40-foot-high pine trees outside Alto, Texas, in November.

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"Why are they here?" he asks. "Did you see any worker vehicles or equipment?"

If it all seems a tad theatrical, he says, come see his land when TransCanada starts burying pipe. "Far as I'm concerned, I'm being invaded by a Canadian corporation."

Bishop isn't the kind of guy who knows when to quit. Even after he'd already taken TransCanada's money, he sued the Texas Railroad Commission in an Austin federal court in November, challenging the agency's certification of the pipeline's common carrier status, which allowed the company to condemn land.

And in December, he sued TransCanada itself, alleging the company misled him about the pipeline's contents. For two years, he says, he's been asking for a list of the chemical compounds that will move beneath his land, but has received nothing. That's probably because federal regulations don't require operators to disclose what kind of petroleum is moving through their lines.

On December 7, Nacogdoches County Court at Law Judge Jack Sinz granted Bishop a temporary restraining order against TransCanada. Bishop was elated. The fight was on, he told me. But within days, TransCanada got an emergency hearing before the judge. At around 8 a.m., December 13, Bishop bent over the plaintiff's table in an empty courtroom, nervously thumbing through his notes. His rumpled blazer dangled from a chair. James Freeman, a Houston lawyer representing TransCanada, entered the courtroom in a sharp dark gray suit.

As the often testy hearing got under way, Freeman introduced what he believed was the only document that counted: a settlement agreement the company and Bishop had signed just over a month before. It was for $65,000 — $35,000 to pay off what Bishop owed the Texas Veterans Land Board for 14 acres of his 20-acre tract. The rest went to Bishop and his lawyer.

"He owns [the 14 acres] courtesy of Keystone," Freeman told the judge, whom he seemed to be equally irritated with. Sinz, in fact, allowed TransCanada to condemn Bishop's land. "I've got a writ from you giving me possession. I don't know that you've actually restrained us from building anything."

But did it give him the right to transport diluted bitumen? the judge asked.

"It would be a refined crude petroleum," Freeman responded. "It's a catch-all for ­everything."

The Texas Legislature had defined crude oil clearly, Bishop interjected, and diluted bitumen does not qualify.

Whatever fears he held, Freeman responded, were no longer relevant once he settled with TransCanada. "That's what was negotiated, that's what was granted and that's what he has to live with."

"I've got the truth on my side," Bishop responded. "There's been so much malarkey shoveled in this courtroom, I can't sort through it." He talked about the diluted bitumen spill on the Keystone I line in North Dakota, and about the million gallons that issued from the Enbridge line in Michigan.

When, the judged asked him, did he realize the pipeline would carry diluted bitumen?

"I started doing research when they started condemnation proceedings," Bishop replied. "He's come and done everything to me except kill my animals and rape my wife! The legal documents are saying crude oil when it's not crude oil."

"But did you know it was bitumen when you settled?" the judge pressed.

"I did know when I settled."

"So how can you claim fraud?"

"If someone put a 9 mm to your head, what would you do?"

"But where was the 9 mm?"

"They've lied to everybody. They lied to me. I was compelled to settle. I was forced to settle...I'll give him his money back. I don't like him. I don't like his company."

"I feel like I have no choice..." the judge said. Construction of the pipeline, he ruled, could continue across Bishop's land. Bishop gathered up his notes and exited the courtroom, looking dazed. In the coming weeks, Sinz will decide whether he even has jurisdiction in Bishop's case. It may be left up to the local district court to decide whether this case is about a contract breached, or about land condemned legally or fraudulently. Later that day, Bishop asked, "How do you fight a ­multibillion-dollar corporation?"
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A few hundred feet from the banks of the Angelina River, protesters were suspended from the trees. They perched atop platforms anchored to heavy equipment. If the machinery moved, or if the tethers were cut, they would fall. Deputies and police officers with the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office, the Rusk Police and the Alto Police clutched zip-cuffs and fanned out in the woods to keep other protesters at bay.