Obama has delayed a final decision on the pipeline until after the November election. But TransCanada is already clearing the way for its southern leg in Texas, drawing protests from activists who say spills along its path could poison communities. They call the pipeline the fuse to the largest carbon bomb on the planet. For more than two weeks, they’ve held a tree-sit to block its path near Winnsboro, Texas. Meanwhile, on Thursday, actress Daryl Hannah and a 78-year-old East Texas farmer were arrested while protesting the clearance [of] her land seized by eminent domain.
Utah, the state has already released land to a Canadian energy development company that recently changed its name to U.S. Oil Sands. The company plans to mine nearly 6,000 acres in an area of unspoiled wilderness that’s also the watershed of the Colorado River, which provides water to more than 30 million people. The mine itself would be water-intensive in what’s already the second-driest state in the country, and activists say chemicals used in the mine could pollute the water that’s left.
John Weisheit talking:
we’re concerned because this particular locality is in a high-elevation place called the Tavaputs Plateau, and it’s one of the last wild places in Utah. It’s a huge refuge for elk and deer. It’s also a beautiful watershed. It not only would affect the Colorado River, but it also—at this particular site, it’s at the top of the drainage, so it would also affect the White River and the Green River. And so, this is an inappropriate activity. People probably aren’t aware that Utah has a lot of tar sands. It’s exposed at the surface. It’s easy to get to. This would be a strip-mining project. It would completely deforest this high plateau. It would completely annihilate the vegetation for these animals. And it would actually—once they’re done, it would never have any kind of beneficial use whatsoever, besides destroying the watershed.
There used to be a lake here. The Colorado River actually was a river system that didn’t make it to the ocean. It drained interiorly, and there were these big, huge lake deposits with algae and leaf litter, and these are the organic material that provided these hydrocarbons.
citrus solution It’s called D-limonene. It’s a terpene. It’s kind of like pine needles make turpentine. And this is the solvent that they want to mix in with hot water to liberate the bitumen in the materials that they strip-mine from the plateau. And what our concern is, is that once this chemical liberates the hydrocarbons, it also liberates all the nasty chemicals and cancer-producing things within the processing system, which are going into the waste sand, which is going into unlined pits. And with all the broken-up sand and rubble and the very intense cloudbursts that are in the area, what happens is, is the rainwater will percolate into these, releasing and picking up the chemicals and putting them into the local aquifers near the surface, and it would also put it into the streams that would carry them to the Green, Colorado or White River, depending on where they’re locating their mining operation.
Moab used to be called the uranium capital of the world. And in the ’50s and ’60s, it was our main economic force in Moab. We also have the second-largest uranium waste pile in the United States, and it’s right next to the Colorado River. There was a time when the Department of Energy was going to cap this mining activity in place near the Colorado River, but thanks to California water managers, such as the Metropolitan Water District, we were able to convince the Department of Energy to move the pile away from the Colorado River floodplain. But, in 1984, the uranium industry fell, and—but its prices dropped. The government refused to subsidize the industry any further. But there’s been a resurgence due to an increase in uranium prices. So there are two companies, Denison and Energy Fuels—they’ve actually merged. They’re currently using a milling facility about 100 miles south of Moab. It’s the only uranium-processing facility in the United States, and so whatever uranium mining is happening is happening here in southeastern Utah.
– from democracynow.org
John Weisheit, conservation director of Living Rivers & Colorado Riverkeeper.