Lucas,
Last week, we got an alarming preview of what’s to come if the Keystone XL pipeline gets the green light.
A pipeline in Arkansas carrying tar sands oil ruptured, saturating a neighborhood with tens of thousands of gallons of the noxious petroleum.
The spill in Arkansas was not the first tar sands pipeline accident to expose residents to toxic chemicals — it’s just the most recent.
TransCanada’s existing tar sands pipeline leaked 14 times in a single year. And in 2010, another tar sands pipeline dumped a million gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo River.
Yet the U.S. State Department’s draft review of the Keystone pipeline expansion concluded that it would have no significant impact on the environment along its proposed route.
The State Department got it wrong.
The State Department is still accepting public comments. Tell it to go back to the drawing board.
The agency’s final environmental review and its analysis on how the project fits in with our national interest will serve as the basis for a decision on whether TransCanada will be allowed to transport tar sands crude from Alberta to Nebraska.
The current review of the Keystone XL pipeline is flawed and conveniently narrow — a set-up for a decision that serves tar sands producers, not the American people.
We have a short window to demand that the State Department provide a comprehensive review of the Keystone XL pipeline.
In addition to inadequately assessing the risk to local communities and ecosystems of pipeline leaks and failures, the State Department’s review ignores the project’s impact on climate change.
This is a glaring omission, as Secretary of State John Kerry recently called global climate change a "life-threatening issue."
The analysis also fails to answer a fundamental question: What is the impact on American consumers?
The State Department needs to explain how it is in America’s economic interests to facilitate the pipeline’s completion — a tough case to make if the pipeline is simply a conduit for oil and refined products to be exported, making the United States less energy secure and driving domestic gas prices higher.
We need to hold the agency accountable for its shoddy review and demand a complete examination of the proposed pipeline.
A comprehensive review would likely reveal that the Keystone XL pipeline would be catastrophic for the climate, toxic to the environment and costly to the American people.
Then the decision is clear: Keystone XL pipeline approval denied.
Thank you for all you do.
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Sincerely,
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