http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/25407
[multiple links and graphic in on-line article]
12/17/2013 02:00 PM
South Portland Votes to Keep Tar Sands Oil Away
SustainableBusiness.com News
After a voter referendum to keep tar sands oil out of Portland, Maine
failed by 192 votes, the city's council is taking the matter into their
own hands.
South Portland's City Council voted 6-1 to approve a moratorium on tar
sands oil yesterday. In force until May, it gives members time to craft
an ordinance that permanently blocks Canadian tar sands oil from being
shipped through the city’s port.
They are doing so under threats of lawsuits from the American Petroleum
Institute - the group that poured in $600,000 in money and
misinformation at the last minute, getting them just enough votes to
squash the referendum.
Hopefully, this will be the end to one of the key routes Canada's oil
companies want to use to export tar sands oil from the US.
If you remember, Portland Pipe and Alberta tar sands companies want to
reverse the flow of the 62-year-old pipeline that's been carrying crude
oil from Portland's port to Montreal. Instead, it would carry tar sands
oil from Alberta through the lakes region in Maine and out of the US
through Portland's port.
"The problems with tar sands are threefold," says Tom Blake, South
Portland's Mayor. "We have a sustainability resolution that says South
Portland will do whatever we can to reduce our footprint on the planet -
and promoting a new form of extraction, especially one as damaging as
tar sands mining in Alberta, increases our footprint. Number two is
transportation. Sending the dirtiest oil on earth through our community
violates what I consider to be good health and safety standards for
South Portland. Number three is emissions. South Portland has signed
onto the US Conference of Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement, which
commits our city to enact policies that meet or beat the targets
suggested by the Kyoto Protocol. Building smoke-stacks would obviously
worsen the air that our children have to breathe. This is about those
kids and their kids, Blake told On Earth.
On a recent hiking vacation in the Arkansas Ozarks, Blake saw too many
parallels between the situation in Maine and Exxon's pipeline blowout
there. "Every morning we would see local headlines about the Exxon oil
spill in Mayflower. The more I read, I thought: This is South Portland."
The two pipelines are similar ages and as in Mayflower, a crude oil
pipeline would reverse course to carry tar sands oil. Every article
detailed a different angle: how the spill impacted fisheries, drinking
water, tourism," he told On Earth.
When the petition for Portland's referendum was submitted, Portland
Pipe's CEO tried to have one-on-one talks with each council member.
While several wouldn't talk with him, Mayor Blake did. "I told him: You
could become a leader in America. You could have one of the most liberal
towns in America love you, because you converted all your resources into
clean energy."
Meanwhile on December 6, a Quebec National Assembly committee voted the
first step in transporting tar sands from Alberta to South Portland.
And Keystone?
The southern leg of the Keystone pipeline is just about complete and in
January will begin carrying tar sands oil from Oklahoma through Texas to
the Gulf.
"Despite brave opposition from groups like Tar Sands Blockade, Keystone
South is now 95 percent complete, and the administration is in court
seeking to beat back the last challenges from landowners along the way.
The president went ahead and got it done. If only he'd apply that kind
of muscle to stopping climate change.," says Bill McKibben in his latest
missive in Rolling Stone.
Public Citizen released a report showing it is riddled with flaws: sags,
dents, welding flaws and a litany of structural problems. It passes 630
streams and rivers in Texas.
"What appears to be problematic construction and corner-cutting raises
questions not only about the chances of a spill, but also about the
quality of TransCanada's in-house inspection system, as well as the
ability of the federal government to oversee the process," warns Public
Citizen.
If these companies want the right to build these pipelines everywhere,
the least they could do is construct them properly!
Here's the report:
Website: www.citizen.org/documents/Keystone%20report%20November%202013.pdf
--
Darryl McMahon
Failure is not an option;
it comes standard.
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