Keystone Pipeline protests reach the White House
The public outcry over the TransCanada Keystone XL tarsands pipeline project picks up a notch amid environmental, eminent domain, and water concerns.
Bottlenecks continue for TransCanada Keystone Pipeline
By MARCIA DAVIS-SEALE - Tribune City Editor
SATURDAY APRIL 2, 2011
Controversy continues to plague the proposed $7 billion TransCanada Keystone XL tarsands pipeline project.
Environmental concerns are mounting - along with economic concerns that the pipeline would raise Midwest oil prices - all overriding, in the public dialogue, pipeline officials’ statements that the project would collectively provide tens-of-thousands of jobs and substantial revenues for cities, states and counties along its route.
The most recent sources of public outcry include a letter of protest sent to Barack Obama signed by a hundred landowners, a State Department decision to call for more public input on the project, a hydrologist’s study of the project’s potential impact on Texas’ Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer declaring the pipeline hazards a prescription for disaster, a policy passed by the National Farmers Union against the pipeline, and, more locally, a plea from the Stop Tarsands Oil Pipelines group (STOP) for the regional water board to take a public stand against the pipeline.
The TransCanda Keystone XL pipeline, according to State Department information, could transport as much as 700,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil, with up to 200,000 barrels a day shipped to existing delivery stations in Nederland and Moore Junction, Texas. According to the State Department report, pumping capacity could be increased to as much as 900,000 (bpd).
TransCanada plans for the pipeline to pump oilsands bitumen from the Athabasca tar sands in Northern Alberta, Canada to the U.S. Gulf, where the oil would compete in the marketplace with other imported heavy crudes from Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, and U. S. offshore production. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline route crosses six states: Montana, South Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas; running 370 miles through 18 counties of Texas: including Hopkins, Franklin, Wood, Upshur, Smith, and Jefferson counties. TransCanada plans for the Keystone XL pipeline to intersect the Keystone pipeline at the point of origin in Canada, and in Nebraska and Oklahoma.
The project consists of approximately 1,707 miles of new 36-inch diameter pipeline, with approximately 327 miles of pipeline running through Canada and 1,380 miles in the United States. The first leg of the Keystone pipeline began moving oil last June across Saskatchewan and Manitoba and through the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and Illinois.
Points of contention along the Keystone XL pipeline route include planned crossing of the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer in Texas and the Ogallala Aquifer in Nebraska.
Because the pipeline route crosses international boundaries, The U.S. State Department holds authority for issuing the official permit for the project, and is reportedly reviewing environmental impact and the pipeline company’s emergency response plans. Yet, without a permit, pipeline officials have exercised eminent domain against landowners along the proposed route, and began surveying and digging the route. Wood and Franklin counties are among the counties where landowners are experiencing this activity.
A decision on the pipeline isn't expected until the fall, but environmental groups and many political leaders have reportedly been urging Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to put the brakes on the pipeline, arguing vital aquifers in several agriculture-dependent states will be made vulnerable.
Debate in D.C.
The pipeline fueled a vigorous debate on Capitol Hill Thursday that pitted economics against the environment, and left the matter unresolved, with partisan feathers ruffled, and passions reportedly raw among both Republicans and Democrats.
Protest letter to President
That same day a letter sent to President Obama and the Secretary of State - signed by 100 landowners including 39 Texas property holders of which nine are Winnsboro and five are Sulphur Springs landowners. The letter purports the dangers of the tarsands pipeline, reporting abuses of eminent domain by the pipeline company, and asking for the president to put a plug in the pipeline plans.
The letter also details concerns that the pipeline will boost gas prices in the country’s Midwest.
According to a press release sent out by the Stop Tarsands Oil Pipelines (STOP) special interest group, “By sending this letter, landowners hope that a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement that the United States State Department is expected to release in April goes into serious detail noting the difference between the tar sands oil this pipeline would carry and conventional crude and the safety risks that come along with it.” Landowners from four other states along the proposed pipeline route signed the letter: Nebraska, Oklahoma, Montana, and South Dakota.
In East Texas
And on Thursday in Longview, two Keystone XL engineers from TransCanada reportedly spoke with LeTourneau University engineering students, admitting new details centering on safety concerns. According to news reports, one of the engineers told students their teams will respond within four hours in the event of a spill, meaning 150,000 barrels worth of diluted bitumen, a thick oily substance, could escape into the environment before anyone arrives on scene. But a Keystone spokesperson said the pipeline would mean more jobs, and more revenue for the state, and has a lot to offer the United States.
Here, in late March, STOP coordinator Brittany McCallister, asked members of the Northeast Texas Regional Water Planning Group to publicly oppose construction of the pipeline, following presentation of a report by a Houston-based hydrologist and attorney warning that the toxic substances pumping through the pipeline and the proposed pipeline route’s proximity to drinking and irrigation water supplies for 10-12 million Texans could prove “disastrous.” The report can be found online at: http://www.sierraclub.org/dirtyfuels/downloads/2011-03-hydrology-report.pdf .
The State Department
In mid-March the U.S. Department of State sent a media note that they are requesting more public comment on a Supplemental Draft Environmental impact State for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, beginning in mid-April and extending for 45 days, with more details on that to come.
National Farmers Union
Other public voices against the pipeline include the National Farmers Union, which passed a resolution last month at their national convention in San Antonio adopting a new pipeline policy in response to concerns about the pipeline.
According to Graham Christensen, in public affairs for the Nebraska Farmers Union, the policy that originated in the Nebraska Farmers Union organization and was later adopted by the National Union “stemmed from reported abuses by TransCanada regarding eminent domain, and environmental concerns.”
He told the Tribune, “The policy basically addresses a couple of components,” Christensen said. “One is protection of water resources, particularly the Ogallala Aquifer and also, in general other freshwater resources that could be affected. We don’t want a tarsand pipeline built straight through the Aquifer, which supplies 80 percent of Nebraskans drinking water - overall two million people drink from this; and supplies 30 percent of the nation’s irrigation, when, there hasn’t been any kinds of studies on what the chemicals would do to the aquifer.…
“The policy,” he said, “also deals with domain threats. We don’t support eminent domain threats from entities that don’t have the authority to exercise eminent domain. The pipeline company doesn’t have that right. The policy also deals with who is actually responsible for clean up.”
Christensen referred to a pipeline spill in the Kalamazoo River last year by a Keystone competitor company named Enbridge. “Enbridge would not claim liability, so it came back to the local community. We adopted a policy that the farmers are not going to be responsible for damages.
“The union is completely grass roots driven, 40,000 due-paying members, so when this delegation unanimously approves this policy, it calls to action to the National Farmers Union. Can we stop a pipeline?” he said. “No, but we can jump into the battle and help people understand what’s wrong here and try to protect our landowners…all the way across the county. An official policy like this gives The National Farmers Union the ability to jump into the conversation.”
“The policy sets certain criteria, that unless the pipeline meets certain criteria, we are going to have an issue, and we cannot support it – this one and all pipelines that want to come in the future that do not meet the criteria.”
A statement by The Nebraska Farmers Union opposing the pipeline referred to the contents of the pipeline “diluted bitumen, a thick, heavy corrosive and toxic form of crude oil is associated with pipeline ruptures at 16 times the rate of conventional crude.”
In Mount Pleasant
According to Walt Sears, administrator for the Regional Water Board, the board took no action on STOP’s recent request for them to publicly oppose the pipeline. He said, “It’s uncertain as to when an official statement would be issued. That information is probably more important to citizens and landowners in the immediate area of the proposed pipeline route.”
He said he was not foreseeing that the water board would have a major role in the public conversation.
“One of the things I anticipate,” Sears said, “is that they [STOP} group will talk to the Sulphur River Basin Authority (SRBA), a governmental entity charged with the water quality in the basin, because some of the pipeline routing goes through that basin. They are the more appropriate forum than this association of water planners. I left the [regional water board] meeting thinking STOP would be making a similar presentation to the SRBA.
A spokesman for the SRBA was not available for comment.
The water board was asked to protest the pipeline after hearing a report drafted by hydrologist Lawrence Dunbar, on a study which Dunbar has been quoted as saying the Sierra Club funded. In the conclusion of his report, Dunbar states, “a spill in a subsurface aquifer like the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer could reduce or eliminate agricultural or domestic use of the groundwater and contaminate groundwater discharges to other waters, “which could have disastrous results.”
In addition, the report states, the fact that the proposed route goes directly through the Mount Enterprise Fault Zone in southern Rusk County only increases the probability of a spill.
City Councilman in Texas
City Councilman Don Williams of New Summerfield in Cherokee County has publicly come out against the pipeline in a letter posted on the Sierra Club website. In his statement he chastises pipeline officials for wanting “to play Russian roulette with the citizens of New Summerfield, Texas.”
Williams states that New Summerfield gets 100 percent of its water from the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer, and contamination to the aquifer could make the water needs of 60 Texas counties unsafe, and possibly eliminate the town of New Summerfield. “…there would be no amount of money or jobs that would justify the risk of one spill.”
The National Sierra Club seems to be undergirding protest across the country. A public protest was staged in Winnsboro earlier in the year, and a meeting on the pipeline, sponsored by the Sierra Club and the STOP group, was also held in Mount Pleasant earlier in the year.
Franklin County
Members of the Franklin County Historical Association have expressed opposition to the pipeline crossing land they have designated as a nature preserve, and have called for a thicker pipeline skin at the Big Cypress Basin watershed crossing near Lake Cypress Springs of 1.5 inches thick over the proposed .5 inch thickness.
The Franklin County Water District (FCWD) took over negotiations with Keystone officials on the historical association land, which the district owns and leased to the association. FCWD President David Weidman has told the Tribune that the water district stands in agreement with the historical association that “the portion of the property taken for the right of way should ne minimized, and that the pipeline should be constructed in a manner so as to permit the continued use of the property as a nature preserve to the fullest extent.”