Keystone XL deserves to be rejected just on the basis of the heavy-handed nasty M.O. of TransCanada and the Canadian government alone. (They've even stooped to plastering the Metro in DC with ads. . unbelievable).
Veto, veto, veto this, President Obama, for the sake of our heartland, and for future generations.
A good story on this on NPR, highlighting a conservative editor who's consistently come out against Keystone, because of the danger to the aquifer.
http://www.npr.org/2014/12/16/371216129/on-nebraskas-prairies-keystone-xl-pipeline-debate-is-personal
excerpt 1:
The Dunavans say that, as Catholics, they see conservation as a moral issue. So they worry about a potential pipeline leak contaminating the vital Ogallala Aquifer, which stretches underneath nearly all of Nebraska, and about the environmental effects up in Canada, where the tar sands oil that will run through the pipeline is extracted.As divisive as the fight over the pipeline has been, it has also built community. For years, the Dunavans thought they were the only ones against the project. Now, they've found allies among their neighbors. "We all believe that our land is sacred, our water is sacred," Susan says. "We don't want a quick monetary, economic ... 'fix.' Let's look at the big picture. The big picture is like, forever. I want to pass this on to the next generations."
excerpt 2, on the conservative editor:
In town, Greg Awtry defies the easy stereotype of the liberal Keystone opponent. The publisher of the local newspaper, the York News-Times, is a self-described capitalist. "I'm very conservative," he says. "Profit is good!"This capitalist publisher figures he's written 50 editorials against the pipeline.
"The only place I think that this is political would be Washington," he says. "Out here on the ground, we have very conservative lifelong Republican ranchers and farmers, arm-in-arm with the very liberal environmentalists who had little to nothing in common along those lines before this came up." Awtry's main concern is the kind of oil that would run through the pipeline: tar sands oil diluted with chemicals. He sees that mixture as a dire threat that could contaminate the water supply that runs underneath nearly all of Nebraska.
"We are talking about one of the greatest natural resources in the United States of America: the Ogallala Aquifer, which furnishes drinking water to people in eight states," he says. "So even though the risk may be minimal, minimal risk is not acceptable."
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