AlterNet.org

AlterNet / By Nina Berman

Air Too Dangerous to Breathe: How Gas Drilling Can Turn Rural Communities Into Industrial Wastelands [With Photos]

Drilling is just the tip of the iceberg. Compressor stations have been associated with significant headaches, bloody noses, skin lesions, blisters, and rashes.

December 13, 2011 |

Photo Credit: Nina Berman/NOOR

View a slideshow from award-winning photographer Nina Berman below. You can see more of Nina's work at NOOR.

The exploding faucet may have launched the movement against fracking, but it's the unsexy compressor station that is pushing it to maturity.

Last week, more than a hundred activists from Pennsylvania and New York, including actor Mark Ruffalo, brought thousands of gallons of drinking water to 11 families in Dimock, Pa., who had been left dry after Cabot Oil and Gas stopped their water deliveries.

The mess Cabot created in 2009 from shale gas drilling had now been cleaned, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which meant no more water for the Dimock 11, the holdout families in a long-running feud over water contamination and cleanup.

At issue was the safety of well water symbolized by a jug filled with brown fluid taken from Dimock resident Scott Ely's well. Held aloft by Ruffalo, who was flanked by families and Gasland director Josh Fox, the crowd challenged officials to come and take a swig if the water was so safe. Paul Rubin, a hydrogeologist, painted a grim picture, laying out a future of continued water contamination. The Ely water had arsenic, manganese, aluminum, iron, and lead at several times the maximum contaminant level (MCL) for safe drinking water.

The visuals were dramatic, and the anti-frack action ended with supporters triumphantly holding a huge water line that snaked from a tanker truck on Carter Road to a family's "water buffalo" — a large storage tank. The Dimock 11 were now supplied.

Next door pro-gas families and a Cabot industry representative held a dueling press conference calling their anti-frack neighbors liars and greedy for money. They bemoaned the besmirching of Dimock by their neighbors and outside agitators.

How the water went bad, how it was tested, when it was tested, who tested it and for what are just some of the issues confronting residents of the Marcellus Shale region and lawyers around the country suing drilling companies for alleged water contamination.

Many of these legal cases have lagged on for years, leaving residents dependent on bottled drinking water and "good neighbor" gestures by drilling companies that deny blame but temporarily supply water, until they decide to stop as Cabot did in Dimock.

Missing from this debate is what many environmentalists see as an equally important issue in shale gas exploration: the air quality.

An invisible product of the huge industrialization of the Marcellus Shale region is the air pollution created not just from thousands of transport trucks used in well construction and fracking, but the added infrastructure required to bring gas to market, most significantly the compressor stations.

These stations are essential to push gas through the pipelines. They can be loud; they emit methane, and BTEX compounds, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes. They have been associated with significant headaches, bloody noses, skin lesions, blisters, and rashes. They operate continuously and permanently.

"Compressor stations are not just accessories to gas production facilities — they are large-scale industrial installations. In some parts of the West, compressor engines contribute an average of nearly 60 percent of all nitrogen oxide emissions from oil and gas operations," said Nadia Steinzor, the Marcellus Shale Regional Organizer for Earthworks.

The same day activists staged the water mercy mission to Dimock, a remarkable but largely unnoticed event occurred a few miles north, in Montrose.

At the local high school, for the first time ever in Pennsylvania history, the DEP allowed a public hearing on a compressor station.

The Shields station slated for Dimock is the fifth compressor station proposed in the last four months for Susquehanna County.

That the meeting even happened was considered by activists to be a great victory, given the longstanding secrecy and industry bias, which has characterized the Pennsylvania DEP.

"Pennsylvania has a history of welcoming extractive industries, so there is definitely more of a culture of let's move forward quickly on these," said Jay Duffy, a staff attorney for the Clean Air Council in Philadelphia. Canvassing door to door the past two months generated such a large number of written comments on the Shields application to convince the DEP to hold a hearing.

Residents who had never attended a protest, who didn't see themselves in the pro-fracking or anti-fracking camp, showed up to learn and express their concerns about air quality. They left with few answers.

"They are not providing the public with full files. When we request file reviews, they have been just allowing us to see the applications. They are not allowing us to see the full permit, " Duffy said. Last month, the Clean Air Council asked the EPA to step in, charging that the Pennsylvania DEP has consistently failed to comply with public input requirements regarding Marcellus Shale permitting activity.

A culture of secrecy and industry favoritism is just one problem. The other is that the Pennsylvania DEP refuses to acknowledge any kind of cumulative impact that occurs when one compressor station is followed by another and then another.

In Southwestern Pennsylvania, for example, there are now 10 compressor stations and a processing plant in a 13-mile radius.

"The DEP says these are all small sources, but when you have a house that is in the middle of it all, sucking in 900 tons a year of pollutants. Only the DEP is looking at them individually, the community is breathing them in cumulatively," Duffy said. The Clean Air Council is suing the DEP on the cumulative impact issue.

"They have a lot of exemptions for the industry. They have the failure to do inventory, the failure to do long-term monitoring. These are all things that are fairly unique in Pennsylvania — kind of kowtowing to the natural gas industry here," Duffy said.

Organic farmers Mary and Adron Delarosa and their young daughter sat through half of the hearing before leaving. Matt Walker, a Clean Air Council organizer had visited their one-room home earlier in the evening to urge them to attend. For more than a year, they had experienced the anxiety of living within a mile of four wells and not knowing if their water was safe. A compressor station is planned nearby. Already, farmers they know have been told their products are no longer wanted, because they are grown in Susquehanna County. The Delarosas left the meeting knowing one thing for certain. They won't be living by the new compressor station. In February, they're giving up their farm, putting their house on a trailer and leaving Pennsylvania.

Nina Berman is a photographer and the author of Purple Hearts: Back From Iraq.

Lawmakers Push Disastrous Legislation on Keystone XL

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 2, 2011 4:11 PM

CONTACT: Center for Biological Diversity Noah Greenwald, (503) 484-7495

Lawmakers Push Disastrous Legislation on Keystone XL

Law Would Force Presidential Decision on Controversial, Destructive Pipeline in 60 Days

WASHINGTON - December 2 - The House Subcommittee on Energy and Power held a hearing today on legislation called the “North American Energy Security Act,” which would require President Barack Obama to issue a permit on the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline within 60 days of the law’s enactment or determine the pipeline is not in the national interest. The legislation comes on the heels of a decision by the State Department to delay the pipeline’s approval to allow for more study of its environmental impacts on our land, air, water and climate.

“Once again congressional Republicans are paying more attention to their deep-pocketed campaign contributors in oil and gas than to the American public, which overwhelmingly opposes more tar-sands development, including the Keystone pipeline,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “If it passes, this law will end careful consideration of the devastating impacts of Keystone, doing terrible damage to representative government as well as to the environment.”

The 1,700-mile pipeline would, every day, transport up to 35 million gallons of oil derived from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, through the middle of the United States to refineries in Texas. In the process it would cross hundreds of streams and rivers and pass through wildlife habitat that would be at an increased risk of disastrous oil spills.

Strip mining of oil from Alberta’s tar sands has already destroyed tens of thousands of acres of boreal forest and polluted hundreds of millions of gallons of water from the Athabasca River, creating toxic ponds so large they can be seen from space. Processing and refinement of tar-sands oil produces two to three times more greenhouse gases per barrel than conventional oil and represents a massive new source of fossil fuels, which leading climate scientist Dr. James Hansen has called “game over” for our ability to avoid climate catastrophe.

If this were not enough, the caustic oil known as bitumen, which would be transported across six states and thousands of water bodies, poses an unacceptable risk of spill. An existing pipeline, Keystone 1, has already leaked 14 times since it went operational in June 2010; one spill dumped 21,000 gallons of tar-sands crude. Another tar-sands pipeline spilled more than a million gallons in the Kalamazoo River.

“From the Alberta tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico, the Keystone XL pipeline would be an environmental disaster,” said Greenwald. “Americans deeply value clean air and water, and we need to be able to trust our leaders to protect our children’s future. Keystone XL should not be approved at all, and clearly it shouldn’t be rushed to approval by cynical politicians making an end run around democracy.”

###

At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature - to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law, and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters, and climate that species need to survive.

Center for Biological Diversity Links:

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Guidance for woody biomass harvests

November 14, 2011

Guidance for woody biomass harvests

By Bill Cook Special to the Record-Eagle

The Record Eagle Mon Nov 14, 2011, 07:18 AM EST

Michigan has developed a document called "Michigan Woody Biomass Harvesting Guidance." It's a concise 18 page outline that, when followed, should reduce environmental risks associated with energy harvests. The guidance was developed by a team of experts from industry, universities, non-government groups, and key public agencies. It is available on the Michigan DNR website.

Might harvesting biomass for energy purposes decimate our forest lands? This is a good question and the answer is resoundingly — not likely at all.

Forest owners are the folks that decide when, and if, any sort of timber harvest will occur on their property. Adding a new market, such as wood energy, to the mix of choices will not lead to a long line of forest owners wanting to harvest timber. Data from research done in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania support this intuitive premise.

However, having a market for low quality wood provides a much needed opportunity across most of the region.

The stumpage and mill prices for energy biomass are low. Typically this sort of harvest operation needs to be done in concert with other product removals, such as pulpwood and sawlogs. Otherwise, the money isn't always there for either the forest owner or the logger.

So, right off the bat, irresistible incentives to "decimate" forest lands don't exist.

Nevertheless, woody biomass for energy is regularly harvested from many timber sale operations. Sometimes the questions arise about nutrient impacts to the soil or the quality of wildlife habitat. These are more good questions that have pretty solid answers.

Nutrient impacts of timber harvest have been studied for decades. There are, indeed, certain forest types on certain sites where caution will be prudent. However, by and large, biomass harvest on most of our northern forest types, on most of our soils, does not present any issues with long term nutrient loss.

As far as habitat goes, much will vary with the wildlife species in question. Generally it is a good idea to leave, or create, such characteristics as standing snags, large logs on the ground, a shrub-sapling layer, and other structural features that make up a diverse set of habitat conditions.

Energy harvests won't change these prescriptions.

The Woody Biomass Harvesting Guidance is designed to be used in concert with the Sustainable Soil and Water Quality Practices on Forest Land manual (from the DNR), which describes practices for a range of resource protection. The Guidance is also compatible with forest certification requirements.

The Guidance advises biomass retention of a sixth to a third of the residues from timber harvest spread across the harvest site. If the site has little woody debris to begin with or if the site is particularly nutrient-poor, then leaving more biomass on the ground is recommended.

Biomass harvesting should be avoided in certain special conservation areas, unless the removal may enhance the management objectives. Leaf layers, stumps, and roots should be left. Large woody pieces should be left. Some of the standing dead trees and cull trees should be retained, when possible.

The Guidance cites additional recommendations for several specific situations, such as riparian zones, storm-damaged sites, exotic species, and others.

The Michigan Woody Biomass Harvesting Guidance is part of a package designed to help ensure the protection of forest resources. Other states, such as Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania have similar guidelines.

Bill Cook, an MSU Extension forester, provides educational programming for the entire Upper Peninsula. His office is located at the MSU Forest Biomass Innovation Center near Escanaba. The Center is the headquarters for three MSU Forestry properties in the U.P., with a combined area of about 8,000 acres.

More homes heat with wood, raising pollution risks

USA TODAY


More homes heat with wood, raising pollution risks

By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY

Mostly to save money, Matthew Walton switched a few years ago from heating his home with natural gas to wood, becoming a modern-day Paul Bunyan.

"The access to cheap wood made a difference," says Walton, a carpenter who lives on heavily forested land in Keene, N.H., where he chops his own fallen or dead trees.

"It saves us a bundle," he says, adding his wood stove can manage all winter with just two cords because he added insulation and good windows to his tidy, 1,300-square-foot home.

As energy prices rise, and winter approaches, more Americans are turning to wood to heat their homes, some hurrying to cash in on tax credits for efficient stoves that expire next month.

This upswing is prompting federal officials, concerned about the health and environmental impact of burning wood, to update 23-year-old certification criteria for stoves and set the first requirements for outdoor wood boilers, which heat water that's piped into homes.

"We are not in the business of telling people how to heat their homes," says Alison Davis of the Environmental Protection Agency, which plans to propose the new rules next year. But if they want to burn wood, Davis urges them to buy an EPA-certified stove and operate it properly so no smoke gets inside the house.

She says boilers are "significantly more polluting" than wood or pellet stoves because they have short stacks and use 10 times as much wood. Even so, she says those meeting the EPA's 2007 voluntary standards are 90% cleaner than older ones. "The technology has improved for wood stoves," Davis says, as has the research on the dangers of wood burning.

Wood heating's upswing

The number of U.S. households heating with wood rose 34% nationwide from 1.8 million in 2000 to 2.4 million in 2010 — faster than any other heating fuel, according to Census data.

"We're seeing a rise mainly in states with high oil and gas prices," most notably in Michigan and Connecticut, says John Ackerly of the Alliance for Green Heat, a nonprofit group that promotes wood stoves.

"It's a combination of rising energy prices and the economic downturn," he says, adding low- and middle-income households are much more likely than others to use wood for primary heating. In rural areas, he says many cut their own wood and in the suburbs, they get it free when trees fall.

He expects wood will become more popular this winter, citing the projected rise in household heating costs. Compared to last winter, heating will cost 3% more with natural gas and 8% more with oil this year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Retailers are gearing up. U.S. shipments of pellet stoves, considered the most efficient way to burn wood, jumped 59% in the second quarter of this year, compared to the same time last year, and pellet fireplace inserts rose 72%, according to Leslie Wheeler of the the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association, an industry group.

"We're expecting those numbers to continue to increase," Wheeler says, because of high fuel prices. She says the tax credits expiring this year — up to $300 for EPA-certified stoves — are not as generous as in 2009 and 2010 when they covered 30% of the cost, up to $1,500. She says many cost $3,000 to $4,000 with installation.

Wood's dirty downside

The problem is that most Americans burn wood in old, dirty devices. Traditional fireplaces are so inefficient they don't heat a room unless they've been retrofitted with a wood or pellet insert.

Of the 10 million wood stoves being used in the U.S., 70% to 80% are not EPA-certified and emit 70% more pollution than those that are, says Lisa Rector of the nonprofit NESCAUM (Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management.) She says most of the 500,000 outdoor wood boilers don't meet EPA's voluntary standards.

Several Northeast and Western states have "burn bans" and other rules to limit wood burning, particularly when air quality is bad.

"People don't realize burning wood is a source of pollution, indoors and outdoors, especially when you're using an older stove," says Janice Nolan of the American Lung Association. She says it can emit tiny particulate matter — soot and ash — that gets lodged in the lungs and toxic substances such as benzene, carbon monoxide and methane.

Walton says he bought an EPA-certified stove that does not emit smoke inside his home. He sees a health benefit in chopping wood and an aesthetic one in burning it, adding: "The stove has a certain ambience."

For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

"We are not in the business of telling people how to heat their homes," says Alison Davis of the Environmental Protection Agency, which plans to propose the new rules next year. But if they want to burn wood, Davis urges them to buy an EPA-certified stove and operate it properly so no smoke gets inside the house.

EPA’s tips on burning wood wisely

EPA’s tips for smoke-free wood burning:

•Use an EPA-certified or qualified wood stove and have it correctly installed.

•Burn only dry, well-seasoned wood that’s been split properly.

•Store wood outdoors, stacked neatly off the ground with the top covered.

•Start fires with newspaper and dry kindling (never with gasoline, kerosene, charcoal starter, or a propane torch) or have a professional install a natural gas or propane log lighter.

•Burn hot fires. Regularly remove ashes from your stove into a metal container with a cover and store outdoors.

•Never burn household garbage, cardboard, driftwood, plywood, particleboard, moldy wood, wood with glue, or wood that’s been coated, painted or pressure-treated. These items could release toxic chemicals when burned.

•Keep all flammable household items (drapes, furniture, newspapers, and books) far from the stove and keep the stove’s doors closed unless loading or stoking the fire.

•Install and maintain a smoke alarm and a carbon monoxide detector. Also, keep a fire extinguisher handy.

•Remember to check your local air quality forecast before you burn. Some areas have restrictions.

By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY

Key Facts on Keystone XL

Key Facts on Keystone XL

Energy Security: Tar Sand will not Reduce Dependence on Foreign Oil

Keystone XL will not lessen U.S. dependence on foreign oil, but transport Canadian oil to American refineries for export to overseas markets.

• Keystone XL is an export pipeline. According to presentations to investors, Gulf Coast refiners plan to refine the cheap Canadian crude supplied by the pipeline into diesel and other products for export to Europe and Latin America. Proceeds from these exports are earned tax-free. Much of the fuel refined from the pipeline’s heavy crude oil will never reach U.S. drivers’ tanks.
• Reducing demand for oil is the best way to improve our energy security. U.S. demand for oil has been declining since 2007. New fuel-efficiency standards mean that this trend will continue once the economy gets back on track. In fact, the Energy Deptartment report on KeystoneXL found that decreasing demand through fuel efficiency is the only way to reduce mid-east oil imports with or without the pipeline.

More info:

• “Exporting Energy Security: Keystone XL Exposed”, Oil Change International

Gas prices: Keystone XL will increase gas prices for Americans—Especially Farmers

• By draining Midwestern refineries of cheap Canadian crude into export-oriented refineries in the Gulf Coast, Keystone XL will increase the cost of gas for Americans.
• TransCanada’s 2008 Permit Application states “Existing markets for Canadian heavy crude, principally PADD II [U.S. Midwest], are currently oversupplied, resulting in price discounting for Canadian heavy crude oil. Access to the USGC [U.S. Gulf Coast] via the Keystone XL Pipeline is expected to strengthen Canadian crude oil pricing in [the Midwest] by removing this oversupply. This is expected to increase the price of heavy crude to the equivalent cost of imported crude. The resultant increase in the price of heavy crude is estimated to provide an increase in annual revenue to the Canadian producing industry in 2013 of US $2 billion to US $3.9 billion.”
• Independent analysis of these figures found this would increase per-gallon prices by 20 cents/gallon in the Midwest.
• According to an independent analysis U.S. farmers, who spent $12.4 billion on fuel in 2009 could see expenses rise to $15 billion or higher in 2012 or 2013 if the pipeline goes through. At least $500 million of the added expense would come from the Canadian market manipulation.

More information:

• “Tar Sands Oil Means High Gas Prices” Corporate Ethics International
• “Pipeline Profiteering” National Wildlife Federation

Jobs: TransCanada’s jobs projections are vastly inflated.

• In 2008, TransCanada’s Presidential Permit application for Keystone XL to the State Department indicated “a peak workforce of approximately 3,500 to 4,200 construction personnel” to build the pipeline.
• Jobs estimates above those listed in its application draw from a 2011 report commissioned by TransCanada that estimates 20,000 “person-years” of employment based on a non-public forecast model using undisclosed inputs provided by TransCanada.
• According to TransCanada’s own data, just 11% of the construction jobs on the Keystone I pipeline in South Dakota were filled by South Dakotans–most of them for temporary, low-paying manual labor.
• Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) and the Transport Workers Union (TWU) both oppose the pipeline. Their August 2011 statement: “We need jobs, but not ones based on increasing our reliance on Tar Sands oil. There is no shortage of water and sewage pipelines that need to be fixed or replaced, bridges and tunnels that are in need of emergency repair, transportation infrastructure that needs to be renewed and developed. Many jobs could also be created in energy conservation, upgrading the grid, maintaining and expanding public transportation—jobs that can help us reduce air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and improve energy efficiency.”

More Information:

• “Transcanada’s Exaggerated Jobs Claims for KeystoneXL” National Wildlife Federation

Safety: A rupture in the Keystone XL pipeline could cause a BP style oil spill in America’s heartland, over the source of fresh drinking water for 2 million people. NASA’s top climate scientist says that fully developing the tar sands in Canada would mean “essentially game over” for the climate.

• The U.S. Pipeline Safety Administration has not yet conducted an in depth analysis of the safety of diluted bitumen (raw tar sands) pipeline, despite unique safety concerns posed by its more corrosive properties.
• TransCanada predicted that the Keystone I pipeline would see one spill in 7 years. In fact, there have been 12 spills in 1 year. The company was ordered to dig up 10 sections of pipe after government-ordered tests indicated that defective steel may have been used. KeystoneXL will use steel from the same Indian manufacturer.
• Keystone XL will cross through America’s agricultural heartland, the Missouri and Niobrara Rivers, the Ogallala aquifer, sage grouse habitat, walleye fisheries and more.
• The agency was not adequately accounting for threats to wildlife, increased pollution in distressed communities where the crude may be refined, or increases in carbon emissions that would exacerbate climate change, and a variety of other issues.

More Information

• “Tar Sands Pipeline Safety Risks”, National Wildlife Federation, NRDC, Others.
• “On Shore Oil Disasters”, National Wildlife Federation
• “Analysis of Frequency, Magnitude and Consequence of Worst-Case Spills From the Proposed Keystone XL Pipeline” John Stansbury, Ph.D., P.E.
• “Pipeline “Safety Conditions” are Smoke and Mirrors”, NRDC

Climate Change: Keystone XL is the fuse to North America’s biggest carbon bomb.

• In a study funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, a group of retired four-star generals and admirals concluded that climate change, if not addressed, will be the greatest threat to national security.
• The State Department Environmental Impact Statement fails to adequately analyze lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by the pipeline. Extraction and refinement of oil sands are more GHG-intensive compared to conventional oil. The EIS estimates that the additional annual GHG emissions from the proposed pipeline could range from an additional “12-23 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent… (roughly the equivalent of annual emissions from 2 to 4 coal-fired power plants)” over conventional crude oil from the Middle East. [8] The EPA believes that the methodology used by the State Department is inaccurate and could underestimate GHG emissions by as much as 20 percent.[9] Given that the expected lifetime of the Keystone XL pipeline is fifty years, the EPA notes that the project could yield an extra 1.15 billion tons of GHGs using the quantitative estimates in the EIS.[10]

Keystone XL Pipeline: The Details.

Keystone XL Pipeline

The Canadian oil and gas company TransCanada hopes to begin building a new oil pipeline that would trek close to 2,000 miles from Alberta, Canada to Texas. If constructed, the pipeline, known as the Keystone XL, will carry one of the world’s dirtiest fuels: tar sands oil. Along its route from Alberta to Texas, this pipeline could devastate ecosystems and pollute water sources, and would jeopardize public health.

Giant oil corporations invested in Canada's tar sands are counting on the Keystone XL pipeline to make the expansion of oil extraction operations profitable: The pipeline would double imports of dirty tar sands oil into the United States.

Before TransCanada can begin construction, however, the company needs a presidential permit from the Obama administration.

Your voice is needed to tell the Obama administration to say “no” to the Keystone XL pipeline and the highly polluting tar sands oil that would come with it.

Dirty tar sands oil

Pollution from tar sands oil greatly eclipses that of conventional oil. During tar sands oil production alone, levels of carbon dioxide emissions are three times higher than those of conventional oil, due to more energy-intensive extraction and refining processes. The Keystone XL pipeline would carry 900,000 barrels of dirty tar sands oil into the United States daily, doubling our country's reliance on it and resulting in climate-damaging emissions equal to adding more than six million new cars to U.S. roads.

Water waste

During the tar sands oil extraction process, vast amounts of water are needed to separate the extracted product, bitumen, from sand, silt, and clay. It takes three barrels of water to extract each single barrel of oil. At this rate, tar sands operations use roughly 400 million gallons of water a day. Ninety percent of this polluted water is dumped into large human-made pools, known as tailing ponds, after it’s used. These ponds are home to toxic sludge, full of harmful substances like cyanide and ammonia, which has worked its way into neighboring clean water supplies.

Indigenous populations

Northern Alberta, the region where tar sands oil is extracted, is home to many indigenous populations. Important parts of their cultural traditions and livelihood are coming under attack because of tar sands operations. Communities living downstream from tailing ponds have seen spikes in rates of rare cancers, renal failure, lupus, and hyperthyroidism. In the lakeside village of Fort Chipewyan, for example, 100 of the town’s 1,200 residents have died from cancer.

These problems will only get worse, unless tar sands production is halted. Unfortunately, an area the size of Florida is already set for extraction. Investing in a new pipeline would increase the rate of production, while decreasing the quality of life for indigenous populations.

Pipeline spills

TransCanada already attempted to cut corners by seeking a safety waiver to build the pipeline with thinner-than-normal steel and to pump oil at higher-than-normal pressures. Thanks to the pressure exerted by Friends of the Earth and allies, the company withdrew its safety waiver application in August 2010.

The threat of spills remains. In summer 2010, a million gallons of tar sands oil poured into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan from a pipeline run by another Canadian company, Enbridge. The spill exposed residents to toxic chemicals, coated wildlife and has caused long-term damage to the local economy and ecosystem.

Heightening concerns, TransCanada's Keystone I pipeline has spilled a dozen times in less than a year of operation, prompting a corrective action order from the Department of Transportation. Experts warn that the more acidic and corrosive consistency of the type of tar sands oil being piped into the U.S. makes spills more likely, and have joined the EPA in calling on the State Department to conduct a thorough study of these risks.

The Keystone XL pipeline would traverse six U.S. states and cross major rivers, including the Missouri River, Yellowstone, and Red Rivers, as well as key sources of drinking and agricultural water, such as the Ogallala Aquifer, which supplies two million Americans.

Refining tar sands oil

After traveling through the Keystone XL pipeline, tar sands oil would be brought to facilities in Texas to be further refined. Refining tar sands oil is dirtier than refining conventional oil, and results in higher emissions of toxic sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide. These emissions cause smog and acid rain and contribute to respiratory diseases like asthma. Communities near the refineries where the Keystone XL pipeline would terminate, many of them low-income and communities of color, already live with dangerously high levels of air pollution. The Keystone XL pipeline would further exacerbate the heavy burden of pollution and environmental injustices these communities confront.

Stopping the pipeline

Tar sands oil is one of the dirtiest fuels on the Earth. Investing in tar sands oil now will delay investments in clean and safe alternatives to oil, such as better fuel economy requirements, plug-in electric cars fueled by solar power, and smart growth and public transportation infrastructure that give Americans choices other than cars.

Soon, President Obama will decide the fate of this pipeline. Tell President Obama to say “no” to dirty tar sands oil.

Take action now

Tell President Obama to halt construction of the Keystone XL

Social media

Join our Facebook Page

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Resources

Fact sheets:

• Keystone XL: Pipeline for Dirty Tar Sands Oil [pdf]
• Evidence of State Department bias in Keystone XL review [pdf]

Report -- Dirty Business: How TransCanada Pipelines bullies farmers, manipulates oil markets, threatens fresh water and skimps on safety in the United States

Interviews -- Telling their stories: The Fight to Stop the Keystone XL Tar Sands Oil Pipeline

Uncovering oil lobbyist influence -- Read about the intensifying scandal regarding the State Department's Keystone XL review

Infographic -- Keystone XL pipeline corruption investigation

Nationwide organizing -- Learn more about the Tar Sands Action's nationwide organizing

Press releases and related media

Read our Keystone XL controversy news round up from October 14, 2011

Read our Keystone XL controversy news round up from October 5, 2011

Read our round up of Keystone XL controversy news following the release of "smoking gun" State Department documents, our lawsuit against the State Department and the expansion of our FOIA request, October 3, 2011 - October 6, 2011

"For Obama, Peer Pressure from Nobel Laureates," New York Times, September 19, 2011

"Poll finds solid opposition to pipeline," World-Herald News Service, September 19, 2011

"State Department Keystone XL pipeline impacts analysis slammed as inadequate," Friends of the Earth, August 26, 2011.

"Tar Sands and the Carbon Numbers," New York Times editorial, August 21, 2011.

"Dozens arrested outside White House in Keystone pipeline protests," The Canadian Press, August 20, 2011.

"Pipeline from Canada may already have U.S. backing," Los Angeles Times, July 13, 2011.

"Study warns of leak risks of Canada-U.S. oil pipe," Reuters, July 11, 2011.

"Without Keystone XL, oil sands face choke point," The Globe and Mail, June 8, 2011.

"EPA lining up with Keystone XL critics," Lincoln Journal Star, June 7, 2011.

"Perilous pipeline: Will Hillary Clinton give the OK to a massive tar-sands pipeline?" Grist, June 3, 2011.

"Keystone Oil Pipeline: Regulators Block Restart Of Keystone Oil Pipeline, Cite Leaks," Huffington Post, June 3, 2011.

"New Report Reveals ‘Dirty Business’ Practices of TransCanada Pipelines," Friends of the Earth, April 28, 2011

"State Department Releases Supplemental Environmental Analysis on Keystone XL Tar Sands Oil Pipeline," Friends of the Earth, April 15, 2011

A Woman with a Plan: The Real Story of Margaret Sanger

Wednesday, Nov 2, 2011 12:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Was Planned Parenthood’s founder racist?

Cain is hardly the first abortion foe to smear Margaret Sanger with such accusations. Here's the real story

By Ellen Chesler, New Deal 2.0

(Credit: Wikipedia/AP)

Topics:New Deal 2.0, Birth Control, Herman Cain, Abortion

This piece originally appeared on New Deal 2.0.

Birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger is back in the news this week thanks to GOP presidential candidate and abortion rights opponent Herman Cain, who claimed on national television that Planned Parenthood, the visionary global movement she founded nearly a century ago, is really about one thing only: “preventing black babies from being born.” Cain’s outrageous and false accusation is actually an all too familiar canard — a willful repetition of scurrilous claims that have circulated for years despite detailed refutation by scholars who have examined the evidence and unveiled the distortions and misrepresentations on which they are based (for a recent example, see this rebuttal from The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler).

It’s an old tactic. Even in her own day, Sanger endured deliberate character assassination by opponents who believed they would gain more traction by impugning her character and her motives than by debating the merits of her ideas. But when a presidential candidate from a major U.S. political party is saying such things, a thoughtful response is necessary.

So what is Sanger’s story?

Born Margaret Louisa Higgins in 1879, the middle child of a large Irish Catholic family, Sanger grew into a follower of labor organizers, free thinkers and bohemians. Married to William Sanger, an itinerant architect and painter, she helped support three young children by working as a visiting nurse on New York’s Lower East Side. Following the death of a patient from a then all-too-common illegal abortion, she vowed to abandon palliative work and instead overturn obscenity laws that prevented legal access to safe contraception.

Sanger’s fundamental heresy was in claiming every woman’s right to experience her sexuality freely and bear only the number of children she desires. Following a first generation of educated women who had proudly forgone marriage in order to seek fulfillment outside the home, she offered birth control as a necessary condition to the resolution of a broad range of personal and professional frustrations.

The hardest challenge in introducing Sanger to modern audiences, who take this idea for granted, is to explain how absolutely destabilizing it seemed in her own time. As a result of largely private arrangements and a healthy trade in condoms, douches and various contraptions sold under the subterfuge of feminine hygiene, birth rates had already begun to decline. But contraception remained a clandestine and delicate subject, legally banned under obscenity statutes, and women were still largely denied identities or rights independent of their relationships with men, including the right to vote.

By inventing the term “birth control,” Sanger brought the practice — and by implication, women’s entitlement to sexual pleasure — out into the open and gave them essential currency. She went to jail in 1917 for opening a clinic to distribute primitive diaphragms to immigrant women in Brooklyn, New York, and appeal of her conviction led to a medical exception that licensed doctors to prescribe contraception for reasons of health. Under these constraints she built a network of independent local women’s health centers that eventually came together under the banner of Planned Parenthood. She also lobbied for the repeal of federal obscenity statutes that prevented the legal transport of contraception by physicians across state lines, which were struck down in federal court in 1936.

Sanger sought and won scientific validation for various contraceptive methods, including the birth control pill, whose development she supported and found the money to fund. In so doing, she helped lift the religious shroud that had long encased reproduction and secured the endorsement of contraception by physicians and social scientists. From this singular accomplishment, which some still consider heretical, a continuing controversy has ensued.

Sanger always remained a wildly polarizing figure, which clarifies the logic of her decision after World War I to jettison “birth control” and adopt the more socially resonant term “family planning.” This move was particularly inventive but in no way cynical, especially when the Great Depression brought attention to collective needs and the New Deal created a blueprint for bold public endeavors.

Some have falsely charged that Sanger defined family planning as a right of the privileged but a duty or obligation of the poor. To the contrary, she showed considerable foresight in lobbying to include universal voluntary family planning programs among public investments in social security. Had the New Deal incorporated basic public health and access to contraception, as most European countries were then doing, protracted conflicts over welfare and health care policy in the U.S. might well have been avoided.

Having long enjoyed the friendship and support of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Sanger also had ample reason to believe the New Dealers would fully legalize and endorse contraception as a necessary first step to her long-term goal of transferring responsibility and accountability for voluntary clinics to the public health sector. What she failed to anticipate was the force of opposition family planning continued to generate from a coalition of religious conservatives, including urban Catholics and rural fundamentalist Protestants, that held Roosevelt Democrats captive much as today’s evangelicals have captured the GOP.

The U.S. government would not overcome cultural and religious objections to public support of family planning through its domestic anti-poverty and international development programs until the late 1960s, after the Supreme Court protected contraceptive use under the privacy doctrine created in Griswold v. Connecticut. At this time, Planned Parenthood clinics became major government contractors, since there were few alternative primary health care centers serving the poor. Today, one in four American women funds her contraception through government programs, many of them still run by Planned Parenthood — a number likely to rise under the Affordable Care Act.

Sanger’s eagerness to mainstream her movement explains her engagement with eugenics, a then widely popular intellectual movement that addressed the manner in which human intelligence and opportunity is determined by biological as well as environmental factors. Hard as it is to believe, eugenics was considered far more respectable than birth control. Like many well-intentioned reformers of this era, Sanger took away from Charles Darwin the essentially optimistic lesson that humanity’s evolution within the animal kingdom makes us all capable of improvement if only we apply the right tools. University presidents, physicians, scientists and public officials all embraced eugenics, in part because it held the promise that merit would replace fate — or birthright and social status — as the standard for mobility in a democratic society.

But eugenics also has some damning and today unfathomable legacies, such as a series of state laws upheld in 1927 by an eight-to-one progressive majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, including Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis. Their landmark decision in Buck v. Bell authorized the compulsory sterilization of a poor young white woman with an illegitimate child on grounds of feeble mindedness that were never clearly established. This decision, incidentally, was endorsed by civil libertarians such as Roger Baldwin of the ACLU and W.E.B. Dubois of the NAACP, both of whom Sanger counted among her supporters and friends.

For Sanger, eugenics was meant to begin with the voluntary use of birth control, which many still opposed on the grounds that the middle class should be encouraged to have more babies. She countered by disdaining what she called a “cradle competition” of class, race, or ethnicity. She publicly opposed immigration restrictions and framed poverty as a matter of differential access to resources like birth control, not as the immutable consequence of low inherent ability or character.

As a nurse, Sanger also understood the adverse impacts of poor nutrition, drugs, and alcohol on fetal development and encouraged government support of maternal and infant health. She argued for broad social safety nets and proudly marshaled clinical data to demonstrate that most women, even among the poorest and least educated populations, eagerly embraced and used birth control successfully when it is was provided.

At the same time, Sanger did on many occasions engage in shrill rhetoric about the growing burden of large families of low intelligence and defective heredity — language with no intended racial or ethnic content. She always argued that all women are better off with fewer children, but unfortunate language about “creating a race of thoroughbreds” and other such phrases have in recent years been lifted out of context and used to sully her reputation. Moreover, in endorsing Buck v. Bell and on several occasions the payment of pensions or bonuses to poor women who agreed to limit their childbearing (many of whom enjoyed no other health care coverage), Sanger quite clearly failed to consider fundamental human rights questions raised by such practices. Living in an era indifferent to the obligation to respect and protect individuals whose behaviors do not always conform to prevailing mores, she did not always fulfill it.

The challenge as Sanger’s biographer has been to reconcile apparent contradictions in her beliefs. She actually held unusually advanced views on race relations for her day and on many occasions condemned discrimination and encouraged reconciliation between blacks and whites. Though most birth control facilities conformed to the segregation mores of the day, she opened an integrated clinic in Harlem in the early 1930s. Later, she facilitated birth control and maternal health programs for rural black women in the South, when local white health officials there denied them access to any New Deal-funded services.

Sanger worked on this last project with the behind-the-scenes support of Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of the National Council for Negro Women and then a Roosevelt administration official. Their progressive views on race were well known, if controversial, but their support for birth control was silenced by Franklin’s political handlers — at least until he was safely ensconced in the White House for a third term, when the government rushed to provide condoms to World War II soldiers.

Sanger’s so-called Negro Project has been a source of controversy first raised by black nationalists and some feminist scholars in the 1970s and later by anti-abortion foes. Respecting the importance of self-determination among users of contraception, she recruited prominent black leaders to endorse the goal, especially ministers who held sway over the faithful. In that context, she wrote an unfortunate sentence in a private letter about needing to clarify the ideals and goals of the birth control movement because “we do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” The sentence may have been thoughtlessly composed, but it is perfectly clear that she was not endorsing genocide.

America’s intensely complicated politics of race and gender has long ensnarled Sanger and all others who have sought to discipline reproduction. As many scholars of the subject in recent years have observed, much of the controversy proceeds from the plain fact that reproduction is by its very nature experienced individually and socially at the same time. In claiming women’s fundamental right to control their own bodies, Sanger remained mindful of the dense fabric of cultural, political, and economic relationships in which those rights are exercised.

In most instances the policies Sanger advocated were intended to observe the necessary obligation of social policy to balance individual rights of self-expression with the sometimes contrary desire to promulgate and enforce common mores and laws. She may have failed to get the balance quite right, but there is nothing in the record to poison her reputation or discredit her noble cause. Quite the contrary.

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. may have put it best in 1966, when he accepted Planned Parenthood’s prestigious Margaret Sanger Award and spoke eloquently of the “kinship” between the civil rights and family planning movements. Here is what he said, since it bears repeating:

There is a striking kinship between our movement and Margaret Sanger’s early efforts. She, like we, saw the horrifying conditions of ghetto life. Like we, she knew that all of society is poisoned by cancerous slums. Like we, she was a direct actionist — a nonviolent resister… She launched a movement which is obeying a higher law to preserve human life under humane conditions. Margaret Sanger had to commit what was then called a crime in order to enrich humanity, and today we honor her courage and vision; for without them there would have been no beginning.

Ellen Chesler is a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and author of "Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America." More Ellen Chesler