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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (828221)	1/7/2015 11:47:06 PM
From: tejek	1 Recommendation Recommended By Brumar89 Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1575424

>> the pipeline will traverse the largest water aquifer in the world; one that American farmers and people are heavily dependent on for drinking and irrigation. And no harm would come to that aquifer, whatsoever. James Goecke . . . [a] hydrogeologist and professor emeritus at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, he has been measuring water tables in Nebraska’s ecologically sensitive Sand Hills region since 1970 and has shunned the political limelight — until now. He recently appeared in an ad for the pipeline’s owner, TransCanada, rebutting some of the arguments against the project and its new route. All this offends Goecke, who even Stansbury calls “the number one expert” on the aquifer. Goecke says that many people have the wrong impression about the danger a pipeline leak would pose to the Ogallala. It’s not like dropping oil into a lake, he says; remember, the aquifer is more like a sponge. He said people “were concerned that any spill would contaminate and ruin the water in the entire aquifer, and that’s just practically impossible.” To do that, the oil would essentially have to run uphill, he said. “The gradient of the groundwater is from west to east; 75 percent to 80 percent of the aquifer is west of the pipeline, and any contamination can’t move up gradient or up slope,” he said. Its sounds like this winger prof was paid off: Keystone XL would transport up to 830,000 barrels of tar sands crude across the Ogallala Aquifer each day— including some places where the groundwater lies beneath less than 10 feet of sandy, permeable soil. If the pipeline were to spill or leak, it could potentially contaminate the primary water supply relied upon by millions of residents, as well as the agricultural industry that is the region’s economic backbone. And there would be no easy fix for TransCanada. The risk of a spill is far from hypothetical. In fact, the existing Keystone pipeline spilled over 30 times in its first year of operation, and the southern leg of Keystone XL was found to have dozens of anomalies along a 60 mile stretch in east Texas. TransCanada’s safety record has come under heavy scrutiny in light of recent revelations that it is not in compliance with Canadian safety regulations and does not intend to use the latest safety technology to detect spills along the Keystone XL route. TransCanada wants Americans to shoulder all of the risk of the Keystone XL pipeline, with zero reward. We can’t afford to risk the livelihoods of millions of Americans for the sake of Big Oil’s bottom line.