Then there’s the trouble we’re just starting to glimpse. The flood waters carried by swollen rivers and creeks along Colorado’s Front Range are rolling across the eastern plains. Right in the path is Weld County, site of 20,544 active oil and gas wells as of Sept. 5. The Denver Post and other media started reporting about oil and gas spills late Wednesday. Anadarko Petroleum notified state regulators that at least 5,250 gallons from two tank batteries had spilled into the South Platte River. The company is using booms to absorb the oil and says it is using a vacuum in the cleanup.
As of Friday, regulators had confirmed spills totaling about 22,000 gallons, including 13,500 gallons of condensate — an oil and water mixture — from tanks near the St. Vrain River.
The Denver Post reported that the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which regulates the industry, called five spills along the South Platte “notable.”
What’s in the water?
Industry representatives said earlier this week that nealy 1,900 wells in flooded areas had been shut down and that 600 employees were out inspecting and repairing equipment. Left unexplained was how could anyone know whether any storage tanks and other equipment had been swept away? How many are damaged and leaking? What about waste pits and pipelines?
The immediate attention appropriately has been on rescuing people and minimizing the damage. But the early reports about problems in the state’s largest oil and gas field drive home the fact that Coloradans will be coping with the effects for a long time. And we likely won’t even know the full extent of the effects for a while.
Thousand-year flood
The deluge is being called a 1-in-1,000-years flood. The National Weather Service says all kinds of precipitation records were broken in Boulder, which receives an average of 1.7 inches of rain in September. As of Monday, Boulder’s rainfall totaled 17.17 inches for the month. The area got 9.08 inches in 24 hours, another new record.
Warm air holds more moisture. The downpour that lasted days occurred in one of the area’s driest months. The Boulder-based National Center for Atmopsheric Research, where many climate scientists work, was closed by the flooding. It was closed last summer because of a nearby wildfire.
In Colorado and much of the Southwest, the word in weather is “extreme.” Last summer Colorado experienced record-breaking heat. This year, we’ve seen what would normally be a once-in-a-generation storm. Who knows what’s next?
This version updates the estimated volumes of spills from oil and gas well sites in Colorado’s flood zones.
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Growing Momentum Against Keystone XL
While Rep. Terry’s measure (H.R. 3, the “Northern Route Approval Act”) passed as expected, this vote was yet another sign that momentum is growing to reject dirty tar sands, protect our communities from disastrous spills, and turn towards cleaner, renewable energy choices. And despite all the theatrics in Congress, the ball remains in President Obama’s court—where it belongs. Both the facts and the political winds support doing the right thing by saying NO to an unneeded tar sands export pipeline that would put our heartland at risk for spills and send us in the wrong direction on curbing carbon pollution.
Just last month, more than 1 million comments from Americans requested that the State Department reject Keystone XL. Given the anti-environmental makeup of this Congress, the Terry bill was expected to pass by a wide margin, but numbers like these obviously made lawmakers take note. As NWF president and CEO Larry Schweiger said about the KXL pipeline:
It’s the wrong approach to put a foreign energy company ahead of more than 1 million Americans who have expressed concern for our nation’s wildlife, energy security and public health.
Indeed it is. The risks of Keystone XL are huge; the reward is 35 permanent jobs in exchange for higher gas prices, oiled wildlife and communities, and another step towards climate calamity.
The Tar Sands Industry’s Plans for Your Backyard
The Great Plains aren’t the only region threatened by reckless tar sands pipeline expansion:
- In 2010, an Enbridge, Inc. pipeline ruptured in Michigan, spilling a million gallons of tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River. Three years and close to $1 billion later, the cleanup continues. Enbridge is laying the groundwork for pipeline expansions that would dwarf Keystone XL and put the Great Lakes watershed in danger of another spill. We need to say no to this proposal as well.
- Exxon’s Pegasus pipeline, reversed to carry tar sands oil, spilled into an Arkansas neighborhood in March, forcing dozens from their homes and oiling hundreds of animals including birds and turtles.
- Now, Exxon and Enbridge want to reverse a pipeline through Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine to carry tar sands oil to the international market. The entire New England delegation voted against Rep. Terry’s Big Oil giveaway bill, and the message from New England is clear: it wants a clean energy future, not oil spills.
And this doesn’t even begin to get at the Florida-sized area in Alberta being mined and leveled to extract this dirty fuel. Habitat for iconic wildlife—like Woodland Caribou, Gray Wolves, Black Bears, and 190 migratory bird species including the endangered Whooping Crane—is being destroyed, putting these species in peril, polluting rivers, and endangering the health of indigenous communities.
The message that tar sands is a bad deal is getting through.
More and more Americans are coming around to the fact that Keystone XL, while a great deal for foreign oil companies, is bad news for the rest of us. As Elizabeth Kolbert put it in an important new article in The New Yorker:
Once Keystone is built, there will be no putting the tar back in the sands. The pipeline isn’t inevitable, and it shouldn’t be treated as such. It’s just another step on the march to disaster.
It’s past time for Pres. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to look at the facts. We don’t need tar sands oil. We don’t need more spills. And we can’t afford to doom our children to the carbon pollution from increased tar sands expansion. People are starting to get it. It’s time for the President to match his words on climate with deeds. Saying no to Keystone XL is a good place to start, and the time to start is now.
