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• But other landowners say they're ready for the dispute to end.
• "Up here where the pipeline's going through, the people I've talked to don't have concerns with it," said Frankie Maughan Jr., who farms near the route in northeast Nebraska. "They just want the money."
• Other states long ago signed off on the line, which would carry 830,000 barrels of oil per day from Alberta, Canada, to Texas Gulf Coast refineries, but nothing has come easy in Nebraska.
• First it was complaints that the initial route would have burrowed through the fragile Sandhills region, which sits atop the massive Ogallala reservoir. After the company made changes, the state approved a new route, but in February a judge sided with pipeline opponents in finding that the wrong state officials approved the plan. The state has appealed the ruling.
• Surveys commissioned by the University of Nebraska and independent polling firms have shown that most Nebraska residents support the project. The latest federal environmental impact report also was favorable.
• "Once we changed the route, the mood in the state completely changed," said TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard.
• The newest offers to property owners promise a 50 percent up-front payment for access plus a signing bonus.
• Weber, who owns land near Tilden, about 100 miles northwest of Omaha, said the company's offer to him equaled what he could have gotten in court. He said he'll still be able to grow crops on top of the strip where the pipe will be buried five feet underground.
• Just a few miles away, 85-year-old Joseph Grosserode said TransCanada agreed to pay him about $100,000 for an easement, and promised he could keep the money even if the project was never built.
• "That was a big concern of mine," Grosserode said.
• Tom Rutjens, a construction-company owner who also lives in Tilden, said he knew of two landowners who were dead-set against the pipeline, but more who were willing accept the risks.
• "Just about everyone else I've talked to has been tickled" with the offers, Rutjens said.
• Local opposition declined as TransCanada's offers went up. Some landowners have received offers as high as $250,000, with signing bonuses of $60,000 to $80,000, Kleeb said.
• Kleeb said activists have taken heart from their recent successes, including the court ruling against the route's approval, and the refusal of some landowners to set

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