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Voices Against Tar Sands: What Americans closest to the Keystone XL tar...

In the national debate surrounding tar sands expansion and projects like TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, the powerful voices of Americans on the front lines are often lost in the noise. And it’s easy to see why -...

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Voices Against Tar Sands: What Americans closest to the Keystone XL tar...

By Anthony Swift, May 15, 2012

In the national debate surrounding tar sands expansion and projects like TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, the powerful voices of Americans on the front lines are often lost in the noise. And it’s easy to see why - the public is under a constant barrage of devious advertising that includes oil industry commercials presenting scripted comments by paid performers as the authentic views of fellow citizens; faked twitter accounts created by lobbyists that portray the lives of fictitious Americans passionate for tar sands; and industry supported lobbying groups that are characterized as nonprofit grassroots organizations. However, if you go to the front lines of tar sands expansion and the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, you’ll hear something entirely different – the authentic stories and powerful voices of those most affected by these projects. These are ranchers, farmers, landowners, businessman, housewives and civic leaders who cross the political spectrum but are unified by a shared understanding that tar sands projects like Keystone XL are not in the best interest of their communities and their country. My colleague Rocky Kistner went out and captured some of these voices in a series of interviews. These citizens and their stories are now being gathered and presented in NRDC’s new site, Voice Against Tar Sands, presenting the unscripted views of people on the front lines of tar sands expansion.

The debate surrounding the Keystone XL pipeline proposal has become so politically polarized and distorted in the media that it’s all too easy to forget what it’s about. Keystone XL isn’t just any oil pipeline – it’s a tar sands pipeline that will carry a substance called diluted bitumen, or raw tar sands, across America’s rivers and through its aquifers on its way to international markets.  Extracting raw tar sands in Canada destroys forests and pollutes water on orders of magnitudes greater than conventional oil production. Its production and use emits significantly more toxins and carbon than conventional crude. Moreover, it presents potential risks to pipelines than safety standards haven’t kept up with and when spilled, it is far more difficult to clean.

Texan landowners, many of whom have no problems with conventional oil pipelines, have found the more they learned about Keystone XL and tar sands, the less they like it. Eleanor Fairchild, whose husband was the chief geologist for Hunt oil, didn’t oppose the Keystone XL pipeline until she learned more about the tar sands that it would carry and experienced the bully tactics of TransCanada. Mike Hathorn, a Texas welder and landowner who is comfortable with the oil pipelines already on his land, is concerned about the safety of Keystone XL and the raw tar sands it will carry.  

Some people, like Susan Connolly and Debra Miller, have seen firsthand what happens when a tar sands pipeline spills. Living in Battle Creek, Michigan, these residents were at ground zero when Enbridge spilled about a million gallons of raw tar sands into the Kalamazoo river watershed. Early on, spill responders found that tar sands behaved differently than conventional crude, dramatically increasing the challenges of cleanup. Susan Connolly and her children felt the first hand effects of tar sands exposure – nausea, rashes, headaches and lethargy. Debra Miller’s business was closed for eight months and watched the spill’s long term impacts to her community. After nearly two years, the cleanup for the Kalamazoo spill continues at a cost of $725 million dollars – making it the most expensive oil pipeline spill in U.S. history.  

It’s no wonder that ranchers like Randy Thompson balked when TransCanada told him they were going to build a pipeline through his land, which happens to overlay one of the richest sources of fresh groundwater in the United States.

Meanwhile, those living in communities near the Texas Gulf Coast refineries that will process the tar sands crude from Keystone XL worry about increased emissions.

These are the voices of people who have come to understand that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and tar sands expansion do not fit in the healthy future they want for their communities and their children.  These voices represent many of the people who were arrested in front of the White House to protest Keystone XL, and later came by the thousands to encircle the White House in opposition to Keystone XL. To understand Keystone XL and the public opposition it has created, you have to hear what the people closest to it are saying. And now you can.

Please go to Voices Against Tar Sands to learn more.

To comment on this post, visit BioGem's blog site, Switchboard

Voices Against Tar Sands: People on the Front Lines Speak Out

Washington’s political wars rarely match reality back home. So when politicians and K Street lobbyists peddle the $7 billion Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, you can bet the red meat rhetoric about jobs and national security—fanciful charges according to independent analysis—is straight...

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Voices Against Tar Sands: People on the Front Lines Speak Out

By Rocky Kistner, May 15, 2012

Washington’s political wars rarely match reality back home. So when politicians and K Street lobbyists peddle the $7 billion Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, you can bet the red meat rhetoric about jobs and national security—fanciful charges according to independent analysis—is straight out of the game plan from DC’s most popular blood sport; trolling for petro dollars.  

But outside the rarefied circles of Washington, voices of a different world hold sway, voices of people who care more about community health and their children’s future than the Faustian bargains and false promises of Big Oil. These are voices of citizens from all walks of life, grandmothers, housewives, ranchers, farmers, civic leaders, willing to speak out about the growing threats of toxic tar sands oil in their lives. They are front line witnesses too often drowned out by the political din blaring from the monied corridors of the nation's Capitol.  

Check out NRDC’s new website Voices Against Tar Sands that includes nearly a dozen people's stories about their fight against some of the most dangerous mining and pipeline projects in the world. Below, farm manager Julia Trigg Crawford, recently profiled in the New York Times, talks about her critical eminent domain case over the Keystone XL pipeline, which TransCanada wants to run through her property near Paris, TX.

 

As my NRDC colleague Anthony Swift notes in his blog, these are the voices that really matter, people who give personal testimony to one of the greatest environmental threats we face today; the extraction of the dirtiest oil on earth.

Extracting raw tar sands in Canada destroys forests and pollutes water on orders of magnitudes greater than conventional oil production. Its production and use emits significantly more toxins and carbon than conventional crude. Moreover, it presents potential risks to pipelines than safety standards haven’t kept up with and when spilled, it is far more difficult to clean.

These witnesses include Michigan residents and small business owners devastated by tar sands-polluted rivers; Nebraska farmers fighting to preserve the world’s largest fresh water aquifer; Texas landowners battling TransCanada’s 1,700 mile land grab; minority neighbors located near massive tar sands refineries poised to spew more airborne poisons into their backyards.   

They are voices like Susan Connolly, a mother of two young children sickened by an Enbridge Energy pipeline that ruptured in July 2010, pouring a million gallons of heavy tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River, parts of which are still off limits to human contact and fishing today.

“I don’t think the communities are aware of what is going to be occurring. They don’t realize the severity of it and just how detrimental it can be to their communities…the only ones who are going to benefit are the pipeline companies. They talk about jobs and job growth. The only job growth for this pipeline that I have seen are for the workers that are cleaning up the spill.”

Four states away, people like Nebraska farmer Randy Thompson, recently profiled in Esquire magazine, have been battling TransCanada’s plans to build the Keystone XL pipeline through the environmentally sensitive Sand Hills region and ship a daily torrent of 800,000 barrels of tar sands oil across critically important agricultural and drinking water supplies.

“We have a foreign corporation here trying force their will on the American people and it’s not right. There’s no benefit to our country that I can see. We’re an agricultural state if we don’t have water we’re out of business…it doesn’t do any good to complain to your neighbor across the fence. You need to make someone else hear your voice, someone that actually has the power to do something about it, that being our politicians, so we need to make the message loud and clear to them we’re not happy with this project.”



Playground in Port Arthur, TX, future destination for Keystone XL tar sands oil. 

Photo: Rocky Kistner/NRDC

 

Meanwhile, in Texas landowners are fighting a multi-year battle over the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline, a plan to pump tars sands crude from the Cushing, OK, oil hub all the way to the massive petrochemical refineries of Houston and Port Arthur and then to the export market. They are the landowners who bear the risk and worry of tar sands spills near their homes and drinking water sources.

They are voices like Eleanor Fairchild, a proud Texan whose husband once had been chief geologist with Hunt Oil. After he retired, the couple bought a house and property with a beautiful lake near Winnsboro, TX, a place her husband, now deceased, called “heaven on earth.” Now, Eleanor finds her land is threatened as she battles TransCanada over plans to run its Keystone XL tar sands pipeline straight through their slice of heaven.

“At first I wasn’t against the pipeline because I did realize what tar sands was…the more I learned the worse tar sands looks. They just wanted a place to put their pipelines down and to heck with the landowner….they just weren’t very nice people when it came to what you wanted for your land…. There should be laws that protect people from this type of treatment. We have to think of children and grandchildren and what we’re doing to this earth. I think we need to leave this earth in as good a shape as we can for generations to come.”

Watch this video of Port Arthur resident Erma Lee Smith, who needs a "breathing machine" in her apartment next to the massive refineries of Port Arthur, TX.

 

Meanwhile, at the end of the proposed 1,700 mile conduit of Canadian crude, the petrochemical Gulf community of Port Arthur lies waiting for a bigger toxic assault. This is where community activist Hilton Kelley, the 2011 recipient of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, has been battling refineries, long a source of hazardous waste and air emissions that locals blame on respiratory problems and cancers in their community. Kelley says residents do not needs the added toxic assaults that tar sands oil will being to his home.

 “All my life we’ve lived in the shadows of refineries and chemical plants that’s located here in our area…once that pipeline is built all those jobs are gone that they said was going to bring so much wealth, those are not permanent jobs, and what were going to get is a continuous flow of this tar sands that is heavy in mercury heavy in metals and heavy in sulfur and what it’s going to do is increase the negative air quality that we presently have.”

These are but a few of the powerful voices from the front lines of the tar sands fight, voices that we will be adding to in the months ahead. They are from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, a multitude of races and communities from regions north to south. They all share a common bond; the health and safety of their families and their friends and neighbors, their cherished environments threatened by Canadian tar sands mining operations rapidly metastasizing through the boreal forests and pristine watersheds of northern Alberta. But this environmental carnage is just the beginning, part of a massive network of pipeline plans designed to pump millions more barrels of dirty tar sands oil toward U.S. refineries and the export market off North America's coasts.

Watch and listen to the voices of people in its poisonous path. These are words well worth heeding, not the empty rhetoric of petrochemical companies trying to fatten their  already profitable bottom lines. These are the people who speak from personal experience and observations in their own communities; they are the ones who speak from the heart.  

To comment on this post, visit BioGem's blog site, Switchboard

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