TransCanada’s proposal to build the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf Coast has galvanized support for Nebraska’s highly sensitive Sandhills region and the eight-state Ogallala Aquifer, the latter of which provides about 30 percent of the groundwater pumped for irrigation in the United States and is one of the world’s largest freshwater aquifers.
The Sandhills region is America’s largest sand dune formation, consisting of 19,600 square miles of wind-deposited dunes covered by native grassland. Its rare abundance of wild prairie character and 1.3 million acres of wetlands “makes the area rich for wildlife, water, and ranching,” according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
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The Sandhills area has historical and cultural significance to Nebraskans because “that’s where our cowboys are,” said Jane Kleeb, founder and editor of Bold Nebraska, a citizens group. She described it as a vast open space of prairie also known as an idyllic setting for gazing into the sky at night and looking at stars.
“The only reason we had a fighting chance against the Keystone XL pipeline was because of what the Sandhills and Ogallala are,” she said.
The proposed Keystone XL route originally would have gone through the Sandhills but was redrawn to bypass it.
Inhabited by 720 species of plants and 314 species of animals, the Sandhills lie at the northern edge of the Ogallala, an aquifer of ancient water that has been around for centuries but is being drawn down faster than it can be replenished.
The Ogallala is seen as one of the more water-stressed parts of the world, but — like the Great Lakes — also is one of the most abundant. The Ogallala traverses 175,000 square miles. It is one of the biggest sources of water for Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico.
It’s also an area crisscrossed with pipelines already.
According to an industry consortium called Oil Sands Fact Check, nearly 25,000 miles of petroleum pipelines traverse the Ogallala, historically carrying 730 billion barrels of oil. It also claims 24 billion barrels of crude oil were produced within the eight-state region where the aquifer exists between 1930 and 2012.
“The nature of the aquifer is also such that in the rare occurrence of a pipeline leak, any released liquid would not be able to travel far, thus reducing any environmental risks,” the group’s website states.
The same is true for northwest Ohio, experts say.
A major crude oil line owned by Sunoco Logistics connects the Gulf Coast with Sarnia, Ont., coming through Toledo and other parts of northwest Ohio. The petroleum pipeline has crossed over major aquifers in northwest Ohio for decades without major problems.
Many Ohioans get their drinking water from underground aquifers, some which contributed to Lake Erie’s water level.
The northwest part of the state has some areas “highly sensitive to land disturbance,” such as Williams County. But in general, northwest Ohio has a lot of geology acceptable for pipelines because of its thick clay buffer, according to Jim Raab, an Ohio Department of Natural Resources hydrologist and supervisor of Ohio’s groundwater mapping program.
The clay buffer ranges from 5 to 50 feet in depth, he said.
“The clay would act as a barrier for the flow of oil downward,” Mr. Raab said.
Bold Nebraska and other activist groups assert the U.S. State Department was not critical enough of TransCanada’s new route in the government’s final supplemental environmental impact statement released in 2014. In comments earlier this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency agreed the State Department should have taken a “hard look” at other alternatives.
Bold Nebraska believes the new route has done little to alleviate concerns except shift the route about 25 miles to the east, Ms. Kleeb said.
But Russ Girling, TransCanada’s president and chief executive officer, said in formal comments submitted to the State Department in February that TransCanada “disagrees with any suggestion that the Department of State has not fully and completely assessed the environmental impacts of Keystone XL.”
“We also reject the EPA’s inference that, at lower oil prices, Keystone XL will increase the rate of oil sands production and greenhouse gas emissions,” Mr. Girling said.
John Stansbury, a University of Nebraska civil engineer associated with Bold Nebraska, contends TransCanada underestimates worst-case scenarios to the Sandhills and the Ogallala in the event of a major Keystone XL pipeline break.
He said heavy tar sands from Alberta — diluted bitumen that some have compared to the consistency of molasses — needs to be heated up to flow through the pipeline. Over time, the pipeline would be vulnerable to cracks from the added stress of expanding and contracting when heated and cooled, he said.
Mr. Stansbury challenges TransCanada’s long-term projection of 11 major spills — 50 barrels or more — over Keystone XL’s designed lifespan of 50 years.
He contends it would be closer to 91 spills.
The major 2010 spill into the Kalamazoo River from the Enbridge pipeline that transports oil sands from Alberta serves as a “poster child” for what could happen to Nebraska, according to a 2013 YouTube video that features Mr. Stansbury. In it, he describes how heavy material settles near the rupture, but lighter petrochemicals mixed in the river’s water column and went downstream.
The Ogallala water table varies greatly in depth. It is at or near the surface of land in some areas — especially the High Plains of Nebraska — but as many as 1,200 feet in states such as Texas and New Mexico.
Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com, 419-724-6079, or via Twitter @ecowriterohio.
First Published March 29, 2015, 6:19 a.m.
