Top 10 Threats from the Tar Sands Invasion
Stand Up to Big Polluters!
Urge President Obama to repel Big Oil's full-blown tar
sands assault and protect our natural heritage, our
communities, and our climate from the dangers of
filthy tar sands oil.
10 THREATS FROM THE CANADIAN
TAR SANDS INDUSTRY
The battle over Keystone XL has been long and polarizing,
with activists and environmental advocates standing up to
big polluters and urging President Obama to stop the dirty
tar sands pipeline that would cut through the heart of America.
But KXL is just one front in the larger war to stop tar sands
oil from invading our country from sea to shining sea.
Despite economic losses, Big Oil remains determined
to triple production of the dirty crude over the next two
decades, and it has plans to flood the United States with
up to six million barrels a day.
The Tar Sands Invasion will pollute our land, air, and
water if we don't stand up and say no to the real and
widespread threats it represents.
1. Digging up tar sands wreaks
havoc on Alberta's boreal
forest.
In northern Canada, mining operations are
digging up and flattening forest to access the
tar sands oil below. They're already
at alarming rates,
putting millions of migratory birds, caribou,
bears, wolves, and endangered species like
the whooping crane at risk. Boreal wetland
ecosystems also trap massive amounts of
carbon—so the more the forest is developed,
the more climate-wrecking gas is released
into the atmosphere. How much more can it
take?
David Dodge/CPAWS/Pembina Institute
2. The production process wastes
enormous quantities of freshwater.
Tar sands mines use 2.4 barrels of freshwater for
every barrel of tar sands produced. Companies
get the water from the Athabasca River—one of
North America's longest free-flowing rivers—and
nearly all of it ends up too contaminated to return.
The Athabasca is already at risk of being
overdrawn, and adding more tar sands operations
would imperil the river, its surrounding wetlands,
and the people and wildlife that depend on them.
3. Tar sands development produces
huge amounts of toxic wastewater.
Mining companies don't send the toxic, sludgy
wastewater left over from tar sands production
back into the river—at least not directly. Instead,
they store it—three million gallons' worth every day—
in vast, open pools. But these tailing ponds, as
they're called, are leaking into rivers like the
Athabasca, harming wildlife and
increasing cancer rates in humans. If Alberta
can't handle the toxic sludge it already has,
how will it deal with more?
4. Burning tar sands oil creates
more pollution than regular crude.
Because of its sludgy composition, mining and
refining tar sands oil demands an enormous amount
of energy. Tar sands generate 17 percent more
carbon emissions than conventional oil.
Ramping up dirty tar sands oil production
means a giant step back in the fight against
climate change, and that's the last thing we need.
5. Corrosive tar sands increase t
he risk of pipeline rupture.
Studies show that tar sands pipelines are more
vulnerable to leaks and spills than those carrying
traditional crude because of the oil's corrosive
nature—and the chemicals necessary to make
it run through the pipes. Big Oil's plan to build
several tar sands pipelines would put land and water
supplies across the United States at serious risk.
Just look at the 2010 spill that sent more than
800,000 gallons of heavy tar sands crude
spewing into Michigan's Kalamazoo River.
Five years and more than $1 billion later,
the river is still contaminated.
Kevin Martini/Flickr
6. A web of new pipelines will
fan out from Alberta's tar sands
pits.
If Big Oil gets its way, a sprawling web of
new or expanded pipelines—some larger
than Keystone XL—would carry millions of
additional barrels of tar sands crude from Alberta
every day. The Alberta Clipper pipeline would
feed 800,000 barrels daily into the Great Lakes
region, while Energy East's would transport
more than a million barrels to the East Coast.
A similar amount would be moved westward
by the Trans Mountain pipeline, feeding
tankers, barges, and rail cars that would
then carry it south—a crafty workaround
to that KXL problem.
7. Exporting tar sands will put
rivers and coastlines at risk
of spills.
Once the millions of barrels of tar sands oil
reach the end of these pipelines, an armada
of supertankers and barges will be waiting to
haul them away—threatening marine habitats
and beaches and crowding iconic waterways
like the Hudson River and the Great Lakes,
posing a much greater chance of a catastrophic
spill. And worse, because tar sands crude
contains a unique brew of chemicals, spills in
oceans, lakes, or rivers can't be cleaned up with
conventional technology. We should probably
work on figuring that out first.
8. Rail cars carrying tar sands
crude will pass through densely
populated areas.
Transporting tar sands oil by rail has already
proven itself to be risky business: "Bomb trains"
keep jumping the tracks, setting towns ablaze,
and contaminating water supplies. And the
problem will only get worse with expanded tar
sands development. Do we really want
mile-long trains of rupture-prone, aging tank
cars rolling through big cities like
Los Angeles and Seattle?
UKRID/Shutterstock
9. Tar sands oil refineries produce
dangerous petcoke waste.
Another hazardous byproduct of tar sands production
is petroleum coke, or petcoke, a dusty black residue
that's left over from the refining process. Tar sands
produce a lot of it—so much that some refineries
have started sending the toxic dust to residential
areas like Chicago's Southeast Side, where it sits
uncovered in massive piles and blows through the
neighborhood whenever the wind kicks up. A boost
in tar sands development will mean more
petcoke piles coming to a town near you.
10. Low-income communities will
be disproportionately impacted.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, much of the infrastructure
supporting the Tar Sands Invasion will exact an
especially high toll on low-income communities
located in railway corridors, near oil refineries and
crude-by-rail terminals, and adjacent to petcoke
waste sites. We don't have to look further than
Alberta's First Nations or the town of Port Arthur,
Texas (where the KXL pipeline would end), to
see the devastating harm the oil industry can
cause. From start to finish, tar sands oil is dirty
and dangerous, and we need to stop the invasion
before it's too late.
Stand Up to Big Polluters!
Urge President Obama to repel Big Oil's full-blown
tar sands assault and protect our natural heritage,
our communities, and our climate from the dangers
of filthy tar sands oil.
The Pembina Institute
Big Oil plans to triple the production of climate-wrecking tar sands.
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