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Blistering Comments on State's Draft Keystone XL Environmental Impact Statementby Sandra ZellmerMonday was the deadline for public comment on the State Department's draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the Keystone XL Pipeline. Mine, which I submitted with the support of two of my University of Nebraska colleagues, are here. The State Department had initially announced that it would take the unusual path of refusing to make all of the comments available to the public absent a Freedom of Information Act request, but after a storm of criticism, the Department has reversed its decision to play hide and seek and now promises to post them all on a website. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency has released its comments, which are extremely critical of the State Department's analysis of the project's effect on climate change and its failure to consider alternative pipeline routes that avoid critical water resources. The EPA's comments, together with the outpouring of opposition from environmentalists and others, could well carry the day on the merits, persuading the President to reject the project as contrary to the national interest. At minimum, they will serve as fodder for subsequent litigation against the construction of the pipeline, if it's approved. The EPA is hardly alone in its criticism. In my comments, I focused on several problems with the State Department's analysis. I write that the draft EIS failed to comply with the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a law that requires federal agencies to evaluate the harmful environmental consequences of their actions and to consider ways to carry out those actions so that they mitigate or avoid such consequences. For example, the draft EIS concludes that the pipeline will produce “no substantive change in global greenhouse gas emissions.” I write,
The pipeline would also pose the risk of grave damage to a unique and extraordinary resource, Nebraska's High Plains (Ogallala) Aquifer. The aquifer sustains agriculture throughout the Great Plains, which in turn provides food for the world (in fact, 27 percent of all U.S. irrigated farmland depends on the Ogallala). It provides 82% of the drinking water for the residents of Nebraska and a half-dozen other states. But it's a fragile resource. The pipeline, despite a much touted rerouting, still goes over the aquifer, and, as I write,
As the EPA noted in its comments, it has learned a good deal about pipeline spills of oil sands crude from its work cleaning up such a spill in the Kalamazoo River in Michigan — a $1 billion-plus effort. EPA writes that such spills "may require different response actions or equipment" than do spills of conventional oil. It also notes that the environmental and public health effects of such spills could be different than for conventional oil spills because oil sands crude does "not appreciably biodegrade." In the end, the State Department's essential task here is to decide whether the pipeline serves the national interest. Even with its failings, the EIS makes clear that it's not. Let's hope the President agrees.
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