Hannah had stood in front and tried to prevent an excavator from uprooting trees for building the Keystone XL pipeline, a project of TransCanada Corp. She was joined by the owner of the property whose trees were being uprooted – 78-year-old Eleanor Fairchild, powerless to protect her property from being ravaged by oil companies backed by big interests.
Hannah’s agent Paul Bassis said that the protest occurred about 80 miles east of Dallas, outside Winnsboro. Bassis said, “Ms. Hannah and Ms. Fairchild were defending Ms. Fairchild’s property from eminent domain abuse by TransCanada.”
Hannah is a well-known environmental activist and was also arrested last year for protesting against the pipeline outside the White House. Obama did not allow the northern section of the pipeline, a $7.6 billion project for carrying crude across the Canadian border into USA, on water supply and environmental grounds. However, the president allowed the southern section of the TransCanada project, which is meant to carry oil from Cushing, Oklahoma, storage hub to oil refineries in Texas.
The pipeline, which is supposed to ship more than half a million barrels of oil sands-derived crude from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast, when both sections of the project are completed, was described as “safe and reliable” by a representative of TransCanada.
Hannah, who played the role of the mermaid in the 1984 hit film “Splash” and also starred in films like “Blade Runner” and “Wall Street” has been vocal throughout, about the manner in which the pipeline was being built: riding roughshod over the rights of private property owners with the banner of ‘eminent domain.’