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Keystone XL Pipeline Presents Choice of Jobs or Environment

By   /   September 30, 2011  /   1 Comment

TOPEKA – Environmentalists and union members, usually allied under the Democratic Party, have turned into opponents at State Department public hearings on construction of a second Keystone oil pipeline, the Keystone XL.

If approved, the pipeline will join the existing Keystone pipeline in bringing oil from Athabasca Tar Sands in Alberta, Canada, to U.S. refineries as far away as the coast of Texas.

Environmentalists oppose the new pipeline and cite greater environmental risks from extracting, transporting and refining the tar sands oil.

Union members and other proponents say the pipeline and the oil it carries will keep dollars out of the hands of America’s enemies, create tens of thousands of jobs and help fuel an economic recovery.

David Barnett, a union employee from Tulsa, told KansasWatchdog.org during Monday’s hearing, “I’m an environmentalist, but I’m a balanced environmentalist. I’m not an environmental extremist.”

The National Cooperative Refinery Association in McPherson currently refines tar sands oil delivered by the existing pipeline.

The pipeline needs State Department approval to proceed because it crosses a U.S. border. President George W. Bush approved the first Keystone pipeline in 2008.

Eight Kansas elected officials spoke in favor of the pipeline. Gov. Sam Brownback told two State Department employees overseeing the hearing that he’s a supporter of an “all of the above” approach to meeting America’s energy needs. He said he supports bio-fuels and wind, “But for the foreseeable future we’re going to need oil.”

Concerns over the nature of the tar sands oil prompted 57 special conditions on construction of the pipeline in addition to the usual precautions. An environmental impact report released by the State Department in August said routing the XL pipeline through the Sandhills of Nebraska and over the Ogallala Aquifer is the most economically feasible, and would be unlikely to have significant environmental impacts.

Fear of contaminating the aquifer is central to opposition to the pipeline.

Rabbi Moti Reiber of Overland Park was first to address the hearing after elected officials spoke. “I consider this project to be a direct threat to Kansas’ natural beauty, to our water and food supply, to the possibility of a clean energy future and to the stability of the world’s climate,” Reiber said.

Reiber and several other pipeline opponents represented Kansas Interfaith Power and Light, a group engaging faith communities in responding to issues of climate and energy.

James Hawley, a Presbyterian minister from Salina, said, “We should not allow this pipeline to feed another 50 years of global oil addiction.”

Lois Harder from Wichita, also representing Kansas Interfaith Power and Light, cited the higher levels of pollutants produced during refining of dirtier tar sands oil.

Danny Hendrix, business manager of Pipeliners Local 798, lives in Tulsa. He said members of his union helped build the existing portion of the Keystone pipeline and many other large pipeline projects.

“All of these projects, all of them, met with the same opposition and many of the same what ifs,” Hendrix said. “All of these mega projects involved geographical obstacles and challenges thought to be insurmountable to the naysayers. But, through proper planning and advanced engineering, today they all lay quietly in the ground performing as a conduit of energy for America’s needs.”

Hendrix and other proponents of the pipeline also raised national security. “To me, personally, the most important issue is who we purchase oil from. We must stop the transfer of wealth from this country to OPEC countries.”

“We will continue to buy oil for years to come; to think otherwise is foolish, but from what country?”

No elected officials spoke in opposition to building the pipeline, but Rep. Charlotte O’Hara, R-Overland Park, did say the 10-year, 100 percent property tax abatement granted for the existing Keystone pipeline is problematic. “When you start playing crony capitalism and giving these types of tax abatements it becomes a problem.”

Topeka police told Kansas Watchdog there were no incidents during the hearing or a small protest march held outside the Kansas Expo Center.

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Related:

Pipeline has a big stake in Kansas (zwire.com)

Bottlenecks continue for TransCanada Keystone Pipeline (dailytribune.net)

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Paul Soutar

  • Maggie

    The terrible need for employment and regional economic boosts is a primary driver for accepting, even embracing, construction of this pipeline.  Additional realities explain need to secure reliable sources of energy. 

    But both these – because of their quality of ‘desperation’, cause denial of the horror of consequences should spillages occur.  Worse yet is the immediate, already happening, earth-damage at source (Alberta).

    As our only home, “spaceship Earth” takes quite a beating – this cannot continue.  The region of Alberta presently being trashed by extraction of this goo is large; damage is horrific.  Water fowl in particular, but other wildlife also, already suffer. These waterfowl and other creatures are North American, they belong to the planet. Their stewardship is everyone’s concern.

    If any of us, literally in our own backyards, expected earth to ‘process’ all our garbage, chemicals, trash and plastic – we would quickly learn earth cannot keep up.  It cannot repair, restore, itself at the pace we create damage. 

    The 21st C. is a time when humanity “runs into a wall of its own making”.  Economic solutions, for families and for communities, must come from changes in current economic policies and practices (these are absolutely at the core of present misery). Visionary stewardship of Earth, and equal access to resources needed for humans to truly thrive, must become paired guiding principles in our systems.  If we genuinely mean it when we say “I’m thinking of children and the future”, we have no other choice.

    There is a serious flaw in economic dynamics that put families and communities “between a rock and a hard place” so that they feel forced to take “bad medicine” in order to survive in the short term.

    (I lived in Kansas for several decades, and lived in northern Canada not far from Fort McMurray – also for several decades. In both environments, I was involved in farming. I have deep understanding of economic distresses by experience; I am deeply fond of Earth and its people, and am dedicated to stewardship solutions that serve both.)