SEWARD - Mike Briggs' attorney had told him to cool it. He does his best as he plunks down in a patio chair on a steamy day on his closely manicured acreage.

But his eyes drift quickly past perfect circles of mulch and perfectly symmetrical spruce trees to the six-foot high pile of dirt all the way along his west property line.

Squalor is just 60 feet away.

"They offered me a paltry sum of money for what they're doing here," Briggs said. "This is my piece of the universe and they're tearing the crap out of it."

"They" is the TransCanada Corporation. The "paltry sum," as he sees it, is about $12,600. And the object of Briggs' fixation is the dirt-strewn trench that will soon accommodate the Keystone petroleum pipeline.

"I understand the company needs eminent domain," he said as he surveys the scene. "I understand how it works. I just think the landowner needs some kind of rights in those situations."

A look at what Briggs, wife Melissa and daughters Sarah and Avery are up against - including moving about 30 trees and losing a dozen others - is, of course, from the micro side. And there is definitely a macro side.

Keystone is a $5.2 billion project meant to link the oil sands of Alberta with refineries in Illinois. Despite a tropical June, contractors are pushing hard to finish the job through Nebraska in 2009 so the oil can start flowing.

In broader terms, hundreds of construction workers represent a bright spot in a dim economic picture and a non-Middle Eastern oil source.

This, of course, is of little consolation to Briggs and others who find that the term "not in my backyard" sometimes has a very literal context.

"When I go to sell this place," he said, "I will have to notify any potential buyers about this easement and the oil pipeline 60 feet from the house. I doubt that will help my property value much."

Keystone spokesman Jeff Rauh called the scene on the Briggs property "the messy part of the pipeline," and described his TransCanada bosses as "absolutely committed to treating Mr. Briggs well."

In coming weeks, said Rauh, "with the pipeline constructed and in the ground, we'll put that area back together and work to minimize the disruption on an ongoing basis for Mr. Briggs and for other landowners at Seward and through the rest of the route."

A pending lawsuit suggests there are at least two points of view about who's right and what's right.

"We worked in good faith to come to an agreement," Rauh said. "We feel that we made an offer that more than compensates for any impact on value."

Rauh said it's important to know that the lawsuits have been few.

"In Nebraska, the pipeline crosses some 570 tracts of land owned by some 470 landowners. And we've successfully negotiated easements with all but six of them. Of those six, the only reason they're not signed in two cases (is) there's some question about title."

Rauh had no easy answer for how Keystone passes so close to the Briggs house when there's a broad expanse of farm ground on the other side.

It's a balancing act involving geography, topography and other factors. "As you balance those inputs, you end up in some proximity to something, whether it's a farm, a residence, a commercial business."

Frank Landis, who chairs the Nebraska Public Service Commission, said state law spells out the authority of eminent domain fairly clearly. Landis said it doesn't matter, in terms of who can exercise eminent domain, how they make their money or how much money they make.

Nor does it matter if they do business across state borders or just within them.

"It doesn't make any difference with a utility," he said. "It's the fact that it is a utility."

Apart from eminent domain, there are states that exercise more control over pipeline routing than Nebraska, and Landis sometimes wishes he and his peers had that sort of authority.

However, "my gut feeling is that the current legislators feel that there is sufficient oversight."

Briggs speaks highly of the Keystone supervisor directing dirt work so close to his house.

For example, "he saw we had small children and he put up a fence."

The construction crew also altered the path of the fence around the electrical hook-up and the propane tank, "so we don't have to go live in the Super 8 all summer."

Beyond that, there's not much to do but wait for whatever degree of normalcy returns.

"You're just so helpless," Mike Briggs said. "There's nothing you can do."

Reach Art Hovey at 473-7223 or at ahovey@journalstar.com.