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Wed Sep 21, 2011 at 09:00 AM CDT
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In December, the State Department will decide whether, or not, to allow construction of the 2,000 mile long Keystone XL pipeline that would transport a million barrels per day of the dirtiest form of petroleum, diluted bitumen or dilbit, from deposits in the Athabasca river basin in Alberta, Canada through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma en route to refineries in Port Arthur and Houston. This pipeline will endanger the water supply for tens of millions of Americans, and put one of the greatest agricultural regions on Earth at grave risk. The period for public comment on the tar sands pipeline officially ends on October 8.
Action must be taken now to prevent this looming ecological disaster from occurring.
- Diluted Bitumen is exceedingly nasty stuff Dilbit is not oil in the classic sense. In nature, it is sticky, asphalt coated sand, or tar sands, found beneath the vast, pristine Canadian boreal forest. The tar sands are extracted by strip mining huge tracts of forest (it requires 2 tons of sand to produce one barrel of oil). The sands are then processed using enormous amounts of water, natural gas and solvents in order to dilute it into a substance liquid enough to flow through a pipeline. This process emits plumes of toxins into the air, and leaves large ponds of heavily polluted water that are believed to leak over a billion gallons of heavily contaminated water a year into the Athabasca river. High concentrations of mercury, thallium, lead, benzene, arsenic, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons have been found downstream of the extractions sites, leading to extremely elevated rates of rare cancers in nearby residents and fish found with major deformities (one was found with two mouths). The amount of energy required to convert this stuff into a transportable fluid will see this nearly uninhabited corner of northeastern Alberta produce more CO2 emissions than Denmark (5.5 million inhabitants) by 2015. This is what a tar sand mine looks like from space. The mine itself is on the left of the map, the "lakes" are the contaminated tailing ponds, and the Athabasca river runs south to north to the right of the ponds. It is also not safe once it leaves Alberta. The corrosive nature of dilbit makes pipelines 16 times more likely to leak than when they carry crude oil.
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- In Nebraska, the pipeline will cross the vast Ogallala Aquifer which underlies much of the Great Plains, providing drinking water to 20 million Americans, 30% of all water used in the country, and which allows intensive agriculture to occur throughout the plains region. The Great Plains produce roughly 25% of the world's annual supply of corn, rye, sorghum, and wheat.
- Texas faces multiple threats from the tar sands pipeline Texas has the longest proposed stretch of the Keystone XL pipeline. The route would take it across east Texas and over the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer which supplies drinking water to 12 million Texans in 60 counties. This aquifer has already been stressed greatly by the record drought of 2011, and any release of contaminants over the outcrop (or recharge) zones of the aquifer could have catastrophic consequences for millions of Texans. Over 200 municipal water wells draw water from within one mile of the proposed route. The extreme fire danger along the proposed route greatly increases the risk of damage to the pipeline which could result in massive discharges of toxic dilbit into our drinking water. Dilbit is considerably more difficult to refine and refining it discharges up to 45% more CO2 than when using traditional petroleum.
- Economic and environmental impact studies produced by Transcanada and the State Department have been flawed or fraudulent Despite a pledge to do a "thorough and objective assessment" of the pipeline's environmental impact, the department has failed to accurately assess the risks to our drinking water supplies, saying it will have "no significant impacts to most resources" during "normal operations." The administration's own EPA has called the DOS environmental impact study "woefully deficient" because "the draft EIS does not provide the scope or detail of analysis necessary to fully inform decision makers and the public, and we recommend that additional information and analysis be provided". The pipeline's ardent supporters often site a Perryman Group study (commissioned by Transcanada) that estimates the construction and operation of the pipeline will create close to 120,000 jobs in the US. The State Department's own job-creation estimates predict only 5-8,000 jobs would be produced. Are 5,000 jobs worth poisoning the drinking water of 35 million Americans?
Though the entire planet is facing rising fuel costs due to unrest in the Middle East and Africa, and the rapidly expanding economies of China and India, some fuel sources are simply not worth the cost of producing them. Tar sands extraction was not even economically viable 10 years ago. If the price of oil ever drops due to evolving "green" technologies or increased reliance on cleaner hydrocarbons and we allowed this pipeline to be built, we will have destroyed a massive wilderness and contaminated our water for nothing.
Please help stop the tar sands pipeline and get involved.
The State Department is holding two hearings in Texas next week for the public to comment on the pipeline proposal
Monday, September 26 - Port Arthur Bob Bowers Civic Center, 3401 Cultural Center Drive. 4:30pm - 10pm
Wednesday, September 28 - Austin University of Texas Lady Bird Johnson Auditorium, 2313 Red River Street. 12pm - 8pm
sources and relevant info:
U.S. Department of State
stoptarsands.org
dirtyoilsands.org
National Wildlife Federation
tarsandsaction.org
Parliament of Canada
National Geographic |
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