I have been ambivalent on the proposed construction of the Keystone Pipeline. It was one of those balancing issues where protection of the environment went up against concerns for new sources of energy and jobs. If you forced me to decide, I would have decided against it only because the US was not the recipient of the oil. It may just be me, but if we are going to build the thing, and give up our land, and take the risk that we are going to damage forever our environment in nearly half the states, then I want the freaking oil to stay in the US for our use and not export it to China.
Well, what opponents of the Pipeline long feared would happen to US if the pipeline was built has happened to Canada:
A massive toxic waste spill from an oil and gas operation in northern Alberta is being called one of the largest recent environmental disasters in North America. First reported on June 1, the Texas-based Apache Corp. didn’t reveal the size of the spill until June 12, which is said to cover more than 1,000 acres. Members of the Dene Tha First Nation tribe are outraged that it took several days before they were informed that 9.5 million liters of salt and heavy-metal-laced wastewater had leaked onto wetlands they use for hunting and trapping. “Every plant and tree died” in the area touched by the spill, said James Ahnassay, chief of the Dene Tha. …
Following initial speculation that the leak stemmed from aging infrastructure, officials from Apache Corp. revealed that the pipeline was only five years old and had been designed to last for 30. The incident comes on the heels of accusations from the provincial New Democratic Party that Alberta Energy Minister Ken Hughes is withholding the results of an internal pipeline safety report pending the U.S. government’s decision regarding Keystone XL.
The icing on the cake, however, is this:
TransCanada Corp. (TRP), which says Keystone XL will be the safest pipeline ever built, isn’t planning to use infrared sensors or fiber-optic cables to detect spills along the system’s 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) path to Texas refineries from fields in Alberta. … Though the so-called external leak detection tools have been recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, the Calgary-based company says they’re impractical for the entire project.
Tough. Your supposedly safe pipeline just caused the largest oil spill in the history of the Dominion of Canada. You want your pipeline to cross American soil, the very least you will do is build an external protection network as described above at your expense. If you do not, the pipeline does not get built.