“You can’t talk about the dangers of snake poisoning and not mention snakes.” Dr. C. Everett Koop
Former U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop, was known for integrity and steadfast efforts to prevent disease. He was a champion for public health with courage and honesty. At a time when smoking cigarettes was common, Dr. Koop said nicotine is addictive. The facts were clear, cigarettes were causing innumerable diseases, including lung cancer and emphysema. No one wanted to hear his message. Dr. Koop changed smoking behavior based on facts.
Our addiction to fossil fuels is similar to smoking. Public policy says we need to build a new energy infrastructure, frack more oil to protect our economy, create jobs, and achieve energy independence. False: there is a glut of shale oil from out-of-control fracking operations, sold as low as $1.50 per barrel in January 2016. Like cigarettes, pipelines are said to be safe and lower gasoline prices good for everyone. Deception is used to ignore earthquakes, financial risks, the use of deadly force, oil spills, and permanent damage to public health. Water protectors are treated like terrorists.
2017 pipeline incidents
January 30, 2017. Blue Ridge, Texas. 600,000 gallons of tars sands crude oil gushed out of the Seaway Pipeline. This line, less than one year-old, carries 400,000 barrels per day from Cushing, Oklahoma, to the international export terminals in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the second Seaway spill. New pipelines are not safer than old pipelines.
February 9, 2017. Paradis, Louisiana. Authorities don’t yet know what caused the explosive fire on the Phillips 66 pipeline. A crew of six workers was cleaning it at the time. One worker was unaccounted for.
Ignoring the future, clinging to the past
We have a million-dollar shale oil pipeline investor setting public policy when we need Dr. Koop. Ignoring the climate emergency and the dire challenges we face, simple, effective, distributed solar energy solutions, are blocked to protect a dying industry.
Diamond unacceptable hazards
Pipelines and elephants leak all the time, and when they do you don’t want to be nearby. In fact, Diamond is designed to leak using cheap welded carbon steel pipes and shut-off valves to prevent catastrophic spills, controlled remotely from Dallas. This may look good, but things don’t always work. Pipeline leaks go undetected until someone hears, sees, or smells the deadly fumes.
The distance between shut-off valves for Diamond is 10 miles. The volume of a cylinder is a function of the length and diameter. Diamond will leak, and when it does over 1.3 million gallons of shale crude oil will spill on our rivers, wetlands, farms, or anywhere across Arkansas. The 2013 Pegasus Mayflower spill was 134,000 gallons of crude. We can expect Diamond spills over 10 times the size of the Mayflower disaster, with Arkansans paying the bill. As with ExxonMobil, Diamond will not pay for damages.
This is not only a question of cost, the Arkansas Department of Health does not have resources to deal with toxic chemical incidents. In 2013, it took ADH five months to prepare a questionnaire and a teleconference remote service with one medical doctor from Little Rock. The lame response to the Mayflower tragedy proves the Arkansas is not prepared to provide minimal medical care for toxic crude oil spills.
Mayflower cancer victims are on their own. One of the victims, said “I never did the assessment because it was a useless questionnaire. The first question was: do you smoke, burn candles, etc. There were no mentions of chemical exposures. The nurse used unprotected probes into your nose and mouth. The doctor was a video conference. A complete waste of time.”
The impacts of oil spills are excessively dangerous for all forms of life. Humans have zero tolerance toxic gases from benzene. Long-term impacts include blood diseases and harmful impacts on the bone marrow and decrease in red blood cells. Cleanup operations with workers without respirators are an additional threat.
Diamond legal challenge.
Plans are underway with new funds for the Diamond Legal Challenge. We will prevail.
Dr. Luis Contreras