DNR uses legal trick to cut public comment out, ok's Tripling Tar Sand Crude Pipeline Capacity

No public input and no concerns whatsoever over possible oil spills? It’s heaven living in such a perfect state.

The DNR decide it didn’t need have to listen to us:

jsonline: The public was "completely cut out of the process" when the DNR decided not to conduct a complete environmental review, and instead considered only an air permit.

What’s so unsettling about the DNR’s okay to triple the capacity of tar sand crude through Wisconsin is a law that doesn’t consider past environmental problems by the Enbridge Energy.

The increase would send more oil from Canada and North Dakota across Wisconsin than the proposed Keystone XL pipeline linking western Canada to the Gulf Coast. In July 2010, an Enbridge line ruptured in Michigan, sending 834,000 barrels of oil into the Kalamazoo River. The company also paid $1.1 million to settle claims by the Wisconsin DNR and the state Department of Justice that the company violated environmental laws during the initial phase of the pipeline project in 2007 and 2008. DNR officials also said state law doesn't allow officials to use a company's past operating record when reviewing environmental permits.

What a nice convenient law. Do people get these same legal benefits as companies?

Hey, Republican Voters in the Town of Jackson, still think Environmental concerns over the Keystone Pipeline were Ridiculous?

I hate to politicize the horror many in the Town of Jackson are experiencing right now, knowing their drinking water isn't safe, but this is what can happen when energy independence comes at the expense of the environment.

I wonder how many conservative voters at the Jackson meeting were in full support of building the Keystone Pipeline through the Nebraska aquifer. It's not so much fun drinking bottled water now, is it?

Journal Sentinel Picture

jsonline: Town of Jackson - More than 800 people packed a meeting Tuesday night to hear West Shore Pipe Line Co. representatives explain how they are cleaning up gasoline spilled in a July 17 pipeline break and testing private wells.

Several homeowners at the meeting in the Jackson Area Community Center shouted objections to the pace of testing wells. Others questioned whether the Village of Jackson municipal well could be contaminated.

One dozen private wells have been contaminated with gasoline since the break … Residents of the area are urged not to use water from private wells for drinking, cooking and food preparation. The area encompasses 230 properties … Gasoline from the spill is moving through fractures in the dolomite, so groundwater is susceptible to contamination … The top of the aquifer is only 120 feet beneath the surface. Residents of those subdivisions should use their water only for flushing toilets. "This means no skin contact, no laundry, no bathing and no lawn or garden watering," the advisory said.

UPDATE: Good news, these folks are getting help:

Each of the private wells at 43 Town of Jackson homes where residents have been advised to limit their water use to flushing toilets only will be equipped by this weekend with special filtration units capable of removing gasoline contaminants, a state environmental official said Wednesday.

Hello, anyone notice oil and gas pipelines are breaking?

This is no small combination of events. While Republicans whine and complain about the “job killing” delays over the Keystone Pipeline, minimizing any possible environmental impact it might have in the event of a leak, the state is now cleaning up two pipeline breaks that could be a harbinger of things to come. The first break is by a Canadian repeat offender:

Hudson Star Observer

An oil pipeline break in Adams County: The oil spill is keeping crews in the Grand Marsh area working around the clock on cleanup. Enbridge Energy Partners, a Canadian Company that owns the pipeline, says the spill wasn't near any waterways and was contained to a small area. 

We’re talking “dirty oil,” a thicker, more corrosive crude that doesn’t float on water, but sinks. That makes cleanup almost impossible. That’s why Michigan had such a big problem on their hands.

Channel3000: (Enbridge Energy is the) same operator of an oil pipeline that cracked in 2010 and gushed nearly a million gallons of oil into a Michigan creek and river failed to make repairs and take appropriate action after recognizing structural problems several years earlier, the National Transportation Safety Board said.

Enbridge Inc. took more than 17 hours to shut down operations after the 30-inch-diameter pipeline ruptured and released crude oil into a wetland area near Marshall, Michigan … the incident was the largest oil spill in the Midwestern United States. During the spill, three shifts of employees monitoring the pipeline from the command center in Edmonton, Alberta, received multiple warning alarms, but dismissed them as being caused by column separation, or bubbles of vapor in the pipeline.

Even worse-more Dirty Oil: 

“U.S. imports of what environmentalists are calling "dirty oil" are set to triple over the next decade, raising concerns over the environmental impact of extracting it and whether pipelines can safely transport this Canadian oil.”

News coverage is surprisingly spotty at this point, and brief. Like this gas pipeline spill, one of the ten largest in the country, as reported by Channel3000:

Officials say environmental monitoring of a massive gasoline spill in Wisconsin could continue for months and perhaps years. A crew of about two dozen workers continues to clean up the site in the Washington County Town of Jackson. An estimated 55,000 gallons of gas leaked from a broken pipeline owned by West Shore Pipe Line Co. last week. The line has since been reopened. The U.S. Department of Transportation said the spill is one of the 10 largest in the country this year. Department of Natural Resources spills coordinator Scott Ferguson says sampling of all wells within a half-mile radius of the spill should be done by Friday, but the results might not be known until next week.