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Most readers of this newsletter already know
of the proposed new oil pipeline route which would
cross Nebraska's fragile Sandhills above the shallow
Ogallala aquifer. The Keystone XL pipeline would deliver
tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to refineries in
the southern United States. A decision on allowing
the pipeline is in the hands of the State Department,
and that decision will be announced this fall.
Recently Nebraska's Representative Lee Terry pushed through the House a most unwise bill to
speed up the process, when in actuality much more
thought needs to be put into the decision of whether
the pipeline should be allowed. It is difficult to
understand why our Governor and Legislative officials are
not doing more to have the pipeline rerouted away
from the Sandhills.
There have been many oil spills within the
existing pipeline system carrying tar sands oil, so the
great concern for Nebraska's water supply is
certainly justified. The sand oil is particularly corrosive
to pipelines, and the Canadian company Enbridge
pipeline illustrates the point very well. The oil from a
typical disaster of the type that happened in Michigan
should have been cleaned up fairly quickly—skimmed,
vacuumed, and absorbed from the surface.
However, the heavy, viscous crude from the tar sands in Alberta is bitumen, so thick that it has to
be diluted with a thinning compound made up of
natural gas, large amounts of benzene and other toxic
chemicals, just to make the oil liquid enough to flow
through the pipeline. This combination is known as DilBit,
and it is difficult to remove because it sinks into the
water column and coats the river bottom. A year
later, scientists are still working on a plan to clean
the submerged oil from the bottom of the Kalamazoo River.
An important concern with tar sands oil extraction,
often overlooked in the talk of spills and water
contamination, is how this massive drilling process
in Canada's northern (boreal) forest will affect
America's birds. A report from the Natural Resources
Defense Council sheds light on the subject, and the
conclusions are disheartening for bird lovers.
The negative impacts of tar sands oil
development are many, and the NRDC lists open-pit mines,
habitat loss and fragmentation, toxic waste holding ponds,
and air and water pollution in the boreal forest as
having
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especially harmful effects on birds.
The report says that as many as 170 million
birds breed in the 35 million acres of the Boreal that may
be developed for tar sands oil. Not only will many
of these birds die from loss and fragmentation of
habitat and from contact with ponds filled with toxic
mining waste, but future generations of these birds will
be lost. In addition to the loss of breeding habitat
for songbirds, the boreal forest is globally important as
a flyway for large numbers of wetland-dependent
birds. As the tar sands oil industry expands, it will place
at risk the shorebirds and others who use the wetlands.
An article on tar sands oil mining in the
July/August 2011 issue of Audubon Magazine also notes
the importance of the boreal forest, stating that the
forest provides habitat for 30% of the continent's
land birds—at least 215 species. Northbound birds from
all four flyways converge on the forest to rest and
feed or nest. Audubon Magazine refers to the pipeline
as "1,661 Miles of Trouble," and indeed it will be,
not only for birds of the northern forest but also for
the water supply of the states the pipeline crosses.
The NRDC report states that tar sands oil
development causes harm through every facet of the
process. Projected tar sands oil extraction will cause
the strip mining of 740,000 acres, which means direct
loss of habitat and wetlands. The massive amounts
of water needed for the mining process will affect
wetlands and alter rivers in the area. Tar sands oil
mining causes air and water pollution which will harm
birds and their food sources. This type of oil production
is already the fastest growing source of greenhouse
gas emissions, producing as much as three times
the pollution per barrel as does regular oil production.
The huge tailing ponds, which contain toxic chemicals,
will cause heavy mortality rates among birds.
Combining the various estimates of the loss of birds from
tar sands mining and from operations in the area,
the Natural Resources Defense Council authors
estimate that bird losses could reach staggering proportions.
The tremendous loss of birds and the possibility
of an oil spill into our Ogallala aquifer makes the
Keystone pipeline a bad idea in every respect.
Nebraskans should be in complete agreement with a
New York Times editorial which stated, "On the
merits—economic and environmental and in terms of future
energy policy, this is the wrong pipeline for the wrong oil."
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