| Walking the Keystone According to the man who led TransCanada’s environmental work on Keystone XL, company workers walked the entire length of the 2,673-kilometre (1,660 miles) proposed eXtra-Large tar-sludge pipeline two, maybe three times. He is not sure. Workers fly over the entire route – a process that can take two weeks. For Keystone XL, they actually walked its entire 2,673-kilometre (1, 660 miles) length two or three times. One of the main issues they discovered was bedrock. In parts of Montana, the bedrock is shallow – trenching solid rock is far tougher than digging out soil. Sorting it all out took about a year. When they finished, they felt they had solved the main issues. That included Nebraska’s Sand Hills, which TransCanada was confident it had figured out. It had spoken with ranchers, landowners, regional agencies and experts. It had told them how it planned to build the pipe. It was told its plans were appropriate. The company took those statements, and concluded there was no reason to skirt the Sand Hills. “We didn’t feel there was concern,” said Michael Schmaltz, who led TransCanada’s environmental work on Keystone. The politics of pipe: Keystone's troubled route, Globe and Mail, Dec. 24, 2011 It is not reassuring when the person you depend on to assess the environmental impact of a cross-country pipeline can’t accurately recall how many times he sent workers on a cross-country trek. These are the same people who blame Hollywood actors for their pipeline troubles, you know the people who get all emotional about the environment. Or maybe, it is those large “environmental organizations” and community activists who are to blame. Another confused explanation from a TransCanada executive, this time its the President, Energy and Oil Pipelines (and we are asked to trust these people when they tell us their pipe dream will have no adverse impact on reality): “There’s probably 10 large environmental organizations with a lot more staff that are blogging, that are writing news releases, that are out there in the communities,” said TransCanada spokesman James Millar. The company struggled to know what to say. The debate over Keystone XL was, for a pipeline company, uncharted territory for a blue-chip utility with no experience fighting environmentally minded Hollywood actors. “One of the things we’ve learned through this process,” Alex Pourbaix, the company’s president of energy and oil pipelines, said at a Toronto investor day in November, “is we have to be a lot more pro-active in dealing with those emotional issues.” The politics of pipe: Keystone's troubled route, Globe and Mail, Dec. 24, 2011 The people who walked the Keystone XL, two, maybe three times, initially found nothing wrong with running their extra-large pipe beneath and above the most important aquifer in the United States. In another revelation in this obsequious piece of journalism, they wanted to save pipe i.e. money and the risk to the Sands Hill aquifer be damned. In the pipeline industry, direct routes are preferred in order to save on costs – the main reason Keystone XL was pointed across the Sand Hills. The politics of pipe: Keystone's troubled route, Globe and Mail, Dec. 24, 2011 Bernard Payeur, January 1, 2012
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