TransCanada's Keystone tar sands oil pipeline has already leaked four times on South Dakota soil in its first year of operation. What will life be like along the Keystone pipeline and its proposed Keystone XL companion line across West River when those two lines get old?
Let us turn to our friends in Alberta, who are dealing with an older pipeline's second spill in five years:
About 28,000 barrels poured out of the Plains Midstream Canada Rainbow pipeline 100 kilometres northeast of Peace River, the Energy Resources Conservation Board said Tuesday, four days after the spill occurred.
...The spill represents 40 per cent more than the 20,000 barrels that leaked from an Enbridge Inc. pipe last summer, in a spill that fouled a Michigan river and cost that company hundreds of millions to clean up [Nathan Vanderklippe, "Alberta Pipeline Leak Largest Since 1975," The Globe and Mail, 2011.05.03].
What are the health impacts of this spill? None whatsoever, the company VP assures us. Those silly First Nations people living nearby who reported headaches, nausea, and burning eyes the day the pipeline broke must have been imagining things.
The Plains Midstream pipeline likely spewed regular oil, not the more highly toxic tar sands oil that TransCanada is shipping across our state at 435,000 barrels a day. The National Wildlife Federation says this spill should make us think twice about approving Keystone XL to more than double the tar sands oil danger to the prairie:
No U.S. government agency or independent medical source has adequately studied the risks of tar sands to human health and wildlife. This is a glaring hole in the State Department's assessment of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline and one more reason to do additional study before Americans are forced to put this ticking time bomb under their land [Jim Lyon, senior VP, National Wildlife Federation, 2011.05.05].
British Columbia residents see this Alberta spill as cause for caution on building pipelines across their fair land as well.