Tenney,
20-year-old Isabel Brooks and two of her friends locked themselves inside a segment of the Keystone XL pipeline -- a controversial pipeline being built to carry toxic tar sands oil to the US coast for export -- to protest its construction. While inside the pipe, they discovered something shocking: there are already holes in the Keystone XL pipeline, created by faulty welding. [Readers, I posted the photos on this blog -- you can see daylight coming in the gaps in the welding all the way around the pipe -- there goes the groundwater!]
But moments after snapping a photo of the light coming into the supposedly airtight pipe, Isabel was arrested and held for 24 days in prison. An hour after her arrest, TransCanada laid that segment of pipeline in the ground without inspecting it.
Despite federal regulations making independent inspection mandatory, TransCanada pipeline contractors hire their own pipeline inspectors. Without truly independent oversight, TransCanada can cut corners and rubber stamp inspections. And when TransCanada cuts corners, our communities, farmland, water, health and planet suffer.
What’s really scary is that if Isabel found one segment of faulty pipeline, it’s likely there are others.
TransCanada has a legacy of pipeline spills. In the Keystone pipeline’s first year of operation, it spilled 12 times -- more than any other first-year pipeline in US history. This is a huge moment to show just how dangerous the KXL pipeline really is. With each day that passes, TransCanada is moving ahead with the construction of this pipeline, potentially burying more uninspected pipe, and putting more communities at risk.
If we speak out now we can make sure that TransCanada’s legacy of spills is stopped before it’s too late.
Thanks for being one of us,
Emma, Angus, Kaytee and the rest of us
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