Utah Land Defenders Stand Up To Dirty Politics

Parts of U.S. Oil Sands mine site extend onto Ute tribal lands. The Environmental Protection Agency warned the company in June that it didn’t have permission to operate on Ute land. On July 21, 2014, fifteen people chained themselves to a fence and to machinery on the tar sands mine site operated by U.S. Oil Sands.

By Anna Simonton, Oil Change International

Lauren Wood grew up in a family of river guides in the Uinta Basin region of Utah. She navigates tributaries of the Colorado River like her urban counterparts navigate subway systems. She learned to ride a horse, and then drive a car, on the Tavaputs Plateau. And she can name most any gorge or gully in the place she calls home.

After clear-cutting trees and sagebrush, U.S. Oil Sands digs open-pit mines to test their tar sands extraction process. If the company starts producing tar sands on a commercial scale, 32,000 acres in Utah’s Uintah Basin could be covered with these pits, along with tailings ponds that would store huge amounts of waste water and chemicals used in the extraction process. (Courtesy of Utah Tar Sands Resistance).

But this landscape so familiar to her has transformed over the past decade to one in which drill rigs are more common than cattle herds, and methane emissions have degraded the air quality in this wilderness region to rival that of Los Angeles.

New technologies like fracking––along with government subsidies––have ushered in an energy boom reliant on extreme extraction methods to produce oil and natural gas. Now the Uinta Basin is ground zero for what threatens to become the next phase in extreme energy extraction: strip mining for tar sands and oil shale.

Tar sands are a sticky mixture of sand, clay, water and bitumen that can be processed into fuel, but require more refining than conventional crude oil, releasing more greenhouse gases and toxins in the process. Despite the fact that Canadian tar sands mining is pushing the Earth toward disastrous climate change, some companies are moving forward with tar sands mining projects in the United States.

Oil shale, not to be confused with shale oil (which is oil released by fracking), is a solid mixture of chemical compounds––called kerogen––inside sedimentary rock. When heated at high enough temperatures, it’s possible to break the kerogen down into liquid hydrocarbons and release them from the rock. This requires a whole lot of fuel just to make more fuel, and also promises to drastically worsen the effects of climate change.

Part one of this article delved into the history of how, in the past, taxpayers have footed costly bills for government-sponsored tar sands and oil shale development that never turned out to be commercially viable. The last of these projects fizzled out in the 1980s. Now, thanks in large part to a provision in the Energy Policy Act of 2005––written by Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch––oil shale and tar sands are back on the table.

Red Leaf Resources and U.S. Oil Sands are two companies that have led the renewed crusade to develop oil shale and tar sands in the United States. Red Leaf leases Utah state land for its oil shale mine site near the Tavaputs Plateau in Uintah County. A few miles away, straddling the boundaries of the Uintah-Ouray Reservation, sits the tar sands mine site of Canadian-based U.S. Oil Sands.

In 2008, one of Red Leaf’s Vice Presidents, Laura Nelson, teamed up with a U.S. Oil Sands Executive to co-write a white paper for the Utah Mining Association (UMA), a lobbying group. In it, they spelled out the ways that state and federal governments should subsidize tar sands and oil shale development. Since then, several of their recommendations––including millions of dollars in tax breaks, leasing public land at rock-bottom prices, and government-funded infrastructure projects––have become reality.

Former Halliburton Subsidiary Managing Construction of First US Tar Sands Mine in Utah

Action to shut down Utah tar sands mine, August 7, 2013. (Photo: Steve Liptay for 350.org)

By Rachael Stoeve, Truthout | Report

The debate over the Keystone XL pipeline has launched Canadian tar sands into mainstream American discourse, but few people seem to know that a tar sands mine is now being constructed in the United States. The project is being managed by former Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root.

The mine will be excavated in PR Spring, a remote piece of wilderness on the Tavaputs Plateau in eastern Utah. Facing northeast from Arches National Park, 109 miles away, one can see the plateau stretching along the horizon. The mine will sit just above the spring that the area is named for; a BLM-managed campground is nearby.

The area is part of the Colorado River watershed, which supplies water to more than 30 million people. The land is owned by US Oil Sands, Inc., a Calgary-based company with a 100 percent interest in 32,005 acres of Utah tar sands leases. According to the company’s website, their leases comprise the largest commercial tar sands stake in the United States.

The company boasts of its “unique and environmentally friendly extraction process,” which uses a citrus-based solvent called d-Limonene to separate oil from the rest of the material brought up in extraction. But a 2012 report by InsideClimate News questioned the safety of the technique, noting that while the FDA lists small amounts as generally safe, “in large doses, laboratory rats got sick when exposed to the chemical.”

On January 20, 2014, US Oil Sands announced in a press release that it had selected engineering firm Kellogg Brown and Root to manage the construction of the tar sands mine and facilities at PR Spring. KBR is a former subsidiary of Halliburton, a private military contractor specializing in oilfield services that has been the subject of controversy for its ties to Dick Cheney, who served as the corporation’s CEO before becoming vice president of the United States, and for its role in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

KBR is not without its own controversies. In March 2008, The Boston Globe reported that the company “avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies” based in the Cayman Islands.

In 2009, an investigation by the US Department of Justice led to charges that KBR had spent the past decade “authorizing, promising and paying” bribes to Nigerian officials to secure prime construction contracts. The company pled guilty and paid a $402 million criminal fine.

When it comes to environmental and health matters, of most concern is KBR’s alleged use of “burn pits” to improperly dispose of waste in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2010, 57 burn-pit lawsuits filed by soldiers across the United States were consolidated and brought before the US District Court in Maryland.

According to the website of Motley Rice, the law firm representing the plaintiffs in tandem with attorney Susan Burke, the lawsuit alleges that health problems suffered by the plaintiffs upon their return to the United States are due to their exposure to burn pits operated by KBR. “Plaintiffs also allege these contractors used open-air burn pits, as opposed to other, safer alternatives, to increase profits,” Motley Rice said on its website. “Items disposed of in burn pits may have included hazardous medical waste, hydraulic fluids, lithium batteries, tires, trucks and more.”

After the district court dismissed the case in February 2013, Motley Rice appealed. The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit voided the dismissal in March 2014 and sent the case back to the district court for a retrial.

KBR’s construction quality has also been called into question. Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have been electrocuted by faulty wiring installed by KBR. According to an investigation by The New York Times, KBR’s management did nothing to rectify the issue, despite complaints from multiple employees. One employee, the Times said, “provided e-mail messages and other documents showing that he had complained to KBR and the government that logs were created to make it appear that nonexistent electrical safety systems were properly functioning.”

For Utah, the effect of KBR’s participation in mine construction remains to be seen. According to the Project On Government Oversight, a watchdog group that tracks and investigates government misconduct, the firm has committed 30 known instances of corporate misconduct both domestically and internationally in the past 18 years.

Given this track record, why did US Oil Sands select KBR to build the mine? In an email, Jack Copping, manager of corporate development at US Oil Sands, said only that “KBR was chosen through a bidding process based on the expertise of the local Salt Lake branch and the pedigree of the individuals involved.”

When asked how important KBR’s history of questionable practices were to US Oil Sands’ decision-making process and ultimate choice, Copping did not respond.

US Oil Sands has been engaged in preliminary construction of the mine throughout 2014. On November 18, 2014, the company issued a press release saying the mine is on track to begin commercial production of tar sands in 2015. Environmental advocacy groups in Utah have been fighting the mine’s development since 2009; though litigation and civil disobedience have not stopped the project, groups such as Utah Tar Sands Resistance continue to actively protest the mine’s construction.

Updates from tar sands resistance in so-called “Utah”

“Disorderly Conduct” by Sidhe, a message to US Oil Sands and other killers

On Sept. 4th, Utah Tar Sands Resistance interrupted the 2014 Uintah Basin Energy Summit, a yearly conference where tar sands and oil shale speculators are exalted and anyone “not excited” about the destruction of the Book Cliffs is shut out and silenced.

Land defender Sidhe had planned to share her entire poem with the 700 conference goers, but police–already aware of the conference organizers’ insecurities and impatience–would not cede a moment to their dissenters. Sidhe was booked into the Uintah County Jail on suspicion of “disorderly conduct,” an exceedingly fitting charge police could level against the tar sands speculators destroying the planet who were in the room, but alas, the police work for the capitalists, not the people.

“Disorderly Conduct” by Sidhe

A message to all of you short-sighted killers
What kind of world will you leave behind for your children
When you’ve squeezed every last drop of life from the land
With your greed and your murder you’ve wrought with your plans

I’d like to remind you your money means nothing
When the water’s been blackened and the creatures are starving
You toy with a force you do not understand
Your chemicals won’t wash all that blood off your hands

First Nations fight cancer up in Athabasca
Your oil trains are time bombs impending disaster
Your pipelines will leak and your cesspools will sprawl
And your babies are left with the brunt of it all

What of the animals caught in the tar?
What of the forests left clear cut and scarred?
What of those atrocities I didn’t witness?
Like Serafino in Columbia sending assassins
To murder union organizers who stood up and spoke out
In the back of my mind I can still hear them shout
I am made of this land you are made of the same
The planet is dying and you are to blame

Are you proud of yourselves? Look at what you’ve become
Heartless machines, so frigid and numb
So reluctant to think that you may just be wrong
That you hear the dissent and you send in the guns.

Upcoming Events on the Land:

Sept. 12-15: Join Trans & Women Organizers on the Plateau

Sept. 19-21: Fall Campout in the Book Cliffs: A Weekend of Stories & Connecting with the Land

More in recent actions:

Colorado Plateau Resistance shuts down tar sands mine construction

Utah Tar Sands Resistance received information regarding a direct action that took place at the US Oil Sands strip mine construction site. These folks are bad ass!

The group released the following video and below the video, a communique:

The Colorado Plateau and its inhabitants are under invasion on multiple fronts of the energy industry. This tar sands mine is a bloody blip in a bigger scheme threatening this land, including the reopening of uranium mines that have poisoned indigenous communities for generations; the planned construction of a nuclear generator in Green River, Utah; violent and vast scraping of the land and squandering of sacred water in pursuit of lowest-grade fuel sources like tar sands and oil shale; a new “oil” refinery in Green River perhaps to centralize production and distribution of those super-toxic tar sands and oil shale fuels; and all of this paid for and made possible by the dangerous fracking boom, which is poisoning our air and water and killing the most vulnerable members of our communities, our babies and old people. This second Big Buildup of the Colorado Plateau is similar to the first Big Buildup of the 20th Century, which fostered disastrous projects like the Glen Canyon Dam, the Navajo Generating station, and the Peabody coal mine at Black Mesa; this second Big Buildup of the Colorado plateau also resembles the initial conquering and genocide of this land by the American government and white settlers. In those prior historical times and today, masters of industry and thus colonialism must control the land and subjugate its people in order to consolidate the wealth of the land in the hands of very few white elites. Their most powerful weapons are and always have been racism and patriarchy and their value system is heartless capitalism. We are forever in contempt of their scheme. This energy industry is a murderous syndicate whose business plans for the future entail the destruction of life on the planet via climate-change catastrophes and crises. Now is the time for all who have something to contribute to give all that you can to the final shut-down of projects like the US Oil Sands tar sands mine and all the many tentacles sucking the life of the Colorado Plateau and Grand Mother Earth herself.

Direct Action Against Utah Tar Sands

The Vigil Continues! The plateau needs us, and we will do our best to fulfill the commitment we have made to this land, which has already given us so much.

Video: Work stopped ALL WEEK at tar sands strip mine!

National Environmental Groups Stand With Utah Land Defenders

PRESS RELEASE: Opponents to enforce shutdown of tar sands mine today (July 21st)

UPDATE: ALL 21 LAND DEFENDERS HAVE BEEN RELEASED.

After a massive direct action protest today at the site of U.S. Oil Sands’ tar sands strip-mining site, a total of 21 were arrested and are currently awaiting charges at Uintah County Jail in Vernal, Utah. In addition to protestors, those acting as legal observers, independent media, and jail support were arrested, as well as several indigenous and trans individuals whose safety we are deeply concerned about.

Early this morning land defenders locked themselves to equipment being used to clear-cut and grade an area designated for the tar sands’ companies processing plant, as well as a fenced “cage” used to store the equipment. Others formed a physical blockade with their bodies to keep work from happening, and to protect those locked-down to the equipment. Banners were also hung off the cage that read: “You are trespassing on Ute land” and “Respect Existence or Expect Resistance.”

13 people were arrested for locking to equipment. An additional six people were arrested after sitting in the road to prevent the removal of those being taken away in two police vans. Two of the protesters arrested were injured. One was taken a nearby hospital to be treated, while the other is being treated at the Uintah County Jail. The nature of their injuries is not being disclosed by the county sheriffs.

Two additional people were arrested when they arrived at Uintah Country Jail to provide support to the land defenders inside. An estimated 10 armed deputies with police dogs were standing outside the jail wearing bullet proof vests. Those at the jail to provide support were told that the deputies were there to “deter” any supporters from actually coming to the jail.

Currently all 21 individuals are still being processed and held.

Support these brave land defenders who put their hearts and bodies on the line by donating to their legal fund.

Rising Tide North America is handling donations through The Action Network. Donate to the land defenders’ legal support fund using this secure link

IT’S ON: Major Tar Sands Construction Underway in Utah

Canadian company U.S Oil Sands has paid their reclamation bond of $2.2 million and has now begun major construction at their second tar sands strip mine in the Book Cliffs of Utah.

U.S Oil Sands’ immediate plans are to clear cut 62 acres of forests and sagebrush land, according to their operations plan, but this spat of clearing may not end until 213 acres of Douglas firs, Pinyon pines, sagebrush and grasses are razed. Long-term plans by this one company threaten up to 32,000 acres of diverse wild lands.

U.S Oil Sands giant belly scrapers and bulldozers have already observably cleared an estimated 20 acres, or the size of a football stadium.

With grasses, shrubs and trees obliterated, the bulldozers are creating massive dust storms that are pummeling PR Canyon to the east, vital habitat for elk, deer, black bears and much more. The dangerously opaque dust clouds routinely cross Seep Ridge Road, substantially blocking drivers’ visibility, causing a major road hazard for which no signage has been posted. Our extensive monitoring of their operations reveal that absolutely no dust control efforts–like water sprinkling–are currently being used to protect the environment, wildlife or motorists.

Click here to read more…

Plunder Road: CANAMEX and the Emerging Impact of NAFTA, TPP on Western North America

From Chaparral respects no borders:

As people across the world honor the twentieth anniversary of the Zapatista Liberation Army rising up in response to the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), resistance continues, most notably against resource extraction and other infrastructure. Meanwhile, what some call “NAFTA on steroids,” the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is currently pending agreement involving the North American countries and others scattered around the Pacific. And rather quietly, a transportation project called the CANAMEX Corridor is underway to facilitate trade along a north-south corridor of western North America. This corridor runs from a port on the Pacific coast of Mexico, through Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, and north near the Tar Sands in Alberta, Canada.

Opposition to the CANAMEX Corridor is necessary not only because it is a major piece of the physical infrastructure needed to facilitate this trade. Its function in international trade is also used to justify the damage brought by its imposition locally, throughout the corridor. CANAMEX, designated as a High Priority Corridor shortly after NAFTA was implemented, already exists in the form of highways, but requires improvement and expansion to effectively facilitate trade.

The trade corridors of North America, CANAMEX being one of them, are extensions of NAFTA. They function as the infrastructure, such as roads, rail, ports, etc., that perpetuates the harms caused by so-called free trade. Among the effects of NAFTA since its implementation have been dramatic unemployment and displacement in Mexico due to subsidized US agricultural products such as corn, and a shift in privatization/ownership of Mexican land by private interests. One of the worst environmentally damaging projects in the world is the Tar Sands extraction in Alberta, Canada, which is in operation at its current level largely due to the NAFTA obligations to supply oil to the US. CANAMEX would also be an important corridor of TPP trade due to its Pacific seaport in Guaymas, Mexico, and its proximity to the west coast in general.

The impact of CANAMEX involves displacement of people and destruction of sacred sites and the environment, thereby affecting indigenous communities and various others. Trade transportation infrastructure is necessary for free movement of goods across borders, but along with it must come heightened border security in response to displacement caused by the impacts of trade agreements. Because it requires fuel, trade infrastructure is one of the primary reasons for resource extraction and is an extension of colonialism. Additionally, it is justified and imposed locally in the form of development and sprawl with compounded reliance on energy and resources such as water.

A project increasingly being used to circumvent the obstacle of lack of funding for these trade corridors is called a public-private partnership (P3), which is an arrangement that is essentially privatization but with some state control. Having been utilized throughout the world, P3s in North America seem now more than ever to go hand-in-hand with trade infrastructure development and neoliberalism in general.

In simple terms, neoliberalism involves trade liberalization, privatization, and relaxation of state power in effort to allow for a free market economy. It is important to frame opposition to the practice of neoliberalism and its trade pacts, privatization, etc., by foremost addressing state collusion and repression, in addition to its form as an extension of colonialism and capitalism. State repression against resistance makes possible the ease with which these colonial/neoliberal projects expand.

(Don’t) Forget Keystone, (But) Tar Sands Drilling Is On In Utah

By Leslie MacMillan, Esquire

As we mentioned yesterday, Neil Young said Monday that tar sands production in Canada’s boreal forests — and the controversial Keystone XL pipeline to transport the fuel across America’s heartland — threatens to pollute the earth, kill Native people and has already transformed the area into a wasteland that “looks like Hiroshima.”

While tar sands have become synonymous with Alberta, few know that the United States may soon see its own oil boom. Last March, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management approved more than 800,000 acres for tar sands and oil shale development over a vast stretch of land in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado known as the Green River Formation.

“With all eyes on Keystone, there’s an equally or even bigger GHG problem brewing right here on American soil — and on Obama’s watch,” said Taylor McKinnon of the Grand Canyon Trust, a nonprofit environmental group that has sued the federal government over the decision.

These lands may hold more recoverable oil than has been used so far in human history — 3 trillion barrels, according to a U.S. government report. They also contain two to seven times the oil — and potential green house gas emissions — as Alberta’s tar sands and could set off a “carbon bomb” that would hasten climate change, said McKinnon.

Vernal, Utah, a town perhaps best known to outsiders for its 40-foot tall pink dinosaur that greets travelers passing through, will be the epicenter of tar sands development. The U.S Department of Energy says there are nearly a billion barrels of oil contained at nearby Asphalt Ridge.

Here, mining projects are already set to go forward on state and private land. State permits in hand, Canada-based U.S. Oil Sands is set to launch America’s first commercial-scale tar sands mine next year.

Cameron Todd, CEO of U.S. Oil Sands, declared, “Ours will be the most environmentally responsible tar sands project ever put on the planet earth.” Bitumen, the sludgy hydrocarbon found in tar sands, must be separated from the rock using chemical solvents and water. Todd says his company will use very little water and a 98 percent biodegradable solvent derived from orange peels.

But environmentalists say such technology is speculative and unproven on American soil, and water is a concern in the arid West. Other major players in tar sands leasing in Utah include Red Leaf Resources, which was recently bought by Total, a big oil player from France, and Enefit, an Estonian company.

The BLM prepared an environmental analysis that passed its first public review period in July. Kent Hoffman, deputy state director for land and minerals for the Utah BLM acknowledged that it’s difficult to evaluate impacts such as emissions. “Greenhouse gasses are a nebulous issue to try to get a handle on,” he said, adding that that the BLM is not “required by the courts” to predict all the impacts, such as end use.

Hoffman said the agency is now reviewing comments and will issue a final analysis in the coming months that will open another public review period. He emphasized that once a parcel of land is leased, a second, site-specific, process-specific review is conducted. Until then, “it’s a speculative shot in the dark as to what the impacts are. To a certain extent, I can see why there’s some uncomfortableness.”

In the arid high country between Vernal and Moab, a ghostly tableau of pale rock formations littered with dinosaur fossils, conventional mining has long been the county’s mainstay. But recreation is also a burgeoning industry, and environmentalists warn that tar sands development — which often involves strip mining — will mar the red-rock country and send clouds of dust as far away as Utah’s big national parks.

Todd called such notions “absolutely ludicrous. You can’t see the mining area from Canyonlands or Arches. I challenge anyone to go to their window and tell me if you can see 50 miles away.”

But a letter dated 2008 from the Environmental Protection Agency to the BLM noted elevated levels of particulate matter and ozone recorded from monitoring stations as far away as Canyonlands, the largest roadless tract and one of the last few wilderness areas in the lower 48 states.

“We have problems with air quality in the Uintah Basin, there’s no question about that,” said Hoffman.

But mining brings money to state coffers and jobs in an area where the average non-mining wage is $26,000, according to statistics provided by the city of Moab. Thus Utah lawmakers are eager to capitalize on the oil boom. Already the state is literally paving the way for mining companies, including improving a highway that runs through one of last pieces of wilderness in the state at a cost of $85 million — most of it public funds. “It’s an amazing amount of money to spend to develop a fuel source whose energy density is about the same as a piece of horse dung,” says McKinnon.

Protests on the Seep Ridge Road have ramped up in recent weeks, with demonstrators duct-taping themselves to equipment and getting arrested.

Meanwhile, Todd says that Utah’s governor and “a long list of state and county officials are very supportive” of his tar sands project.

One of the names on his list is Ken Davey, an economic development specialist for the city of Moab. He estimated that only 10 to 15 percent of Moab residents strongly support tar sands development; another 15 percent oppose it. “Most are somewhere in the middle: we value the economic opportunities, but we don’t want to end up like Canada.”

Giant US Tar Sands Project Lurking in the Shadows

Imminent tar sands development threatens western US

By Jacob Chamberlain, Common Dreams

While rightful attention has been focused on Alberta’s tar sands development and its slated transport through the Keystone XL pipeline, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, along with Utah lawmakers, have quietly pushed forward plans for a similarly massive tar sands project back in the U.S., an exposé in Esquire highlights Thursday.

Much like Alberta’s vast tar sands oil extraction that has devastated public and environmental health and the climate, the BLM’s recent approval of mining projects will exploit more than 800,000 acres of public and private land for tar sands development across several western states.

The massive Green River Formation, a stretch of land that runs through Utah, Wyoming and Colorado, would be dug up and excavated, and Utah lawmakers “are eager to capitalize” on the imminent oil boom, according to the article.

As Esquire writes, “Already the state is literally paving the way for mining companies, including improving a highway that runs through one of last pieces of wilderness in the state at a cost of $85 million — most of it public funds.”

“With all eyes on Keystone, there’s an equally or even bigger GHG problem brewing right here on American soil—and on Obama’s watch,” Taylor McKinnon of the Grand Canyon Trust told Esquire.

And Esquire adds:

These lands may hold more recoverable oil than has been used so far in human history — 3 trillion barrels, according to a U.S. government report. They also contain two to seven times the oil — and potential green house gas emissions — as Alberta’s tar sands and could set off a “carbon bomb” that would hasten climate change…

The Center for Biological Diversity reported this week that a minor victory was won against the tar sands project when Emery Refining was forced to redo permitting for a tar sands refinery in Utah —after its approved construction by the Utah Department of Environmental Quality was appealed by groups in July for violating the Utah Air Conservation Act.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has passed preliminary approvals for extraction projects, but a second public review period is expected within the next couple of months—meaning the battle is not over yet.

The BLM is also fighting a coalition of environmental organizations in court and faces a burgeoning anti-tar sands grassroots movement, with groups such as Utah Tar Sands Resistance who organize ongoing local protests against the plans.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

7/22 STOP SUNCOR FROM BUILDING A PIPELINE THROUGH OUR BACKYARDS

JOIN US AT THE ADAMS COUNTY COMMISSIONER PUBLIC HEARING TO SAY NO TO SUNCOR PUTTING OUR HEALTH & HOMES AT RISK!

MONDAY, JULY 22, 6:30PM 4430 South Adams County Parkway, Brighton 80601
or email your comments to CLaRue@adcogov.org

On June 27th, at the Adams County Planning Commission public hearing, Suncor asked for a conditional use permit to allow construction of a 16-inch diameter crude oil pipeline through Adams County. This pipeline would carry oil and tar sands from Cheyenne WY to the refinery in Commerce City. The planning commissioners heard from many concerned community members and after much discussion they voted 5 to 1 against Suncor. This means that they are officially recommending to the County Commissioners that they deny Suncor’s request! The final decision however is up to the County Commissioners at their public hearing on Monday July 22nd. Please come and let your voice be heard during the public comments section of the hearing, urging them to consider the overwhelming recommendation from the planning board to DENY this hazardous project! To listen to the audio of the 6/27 hearing click here and scroll down to Planning Commission 6/27/13 Audio, the Suncor case starts at 1:45:30.

Suncor held two ‘community meetings’ in December 2012 where there were 5 and 14 people in attendance. Many people who spoke during the public comments cited that they had not received any notification of these meetings, even though their homes are directly in the proposed route.

We are not counting on Suncor to inform us about the impact on our community, or to care about the health, safety or well-being of the people along their proposed route and surrounding areas. They have a distinct track record of devastating pipeline spills and dumping chemicals in Canada and the US. They like to say that their top priority is safety, but they are responsible to their shareholders and committed to making a profit above all else. They have not shown themselves to be accountable to the people of Adams County or anyone else downstream. When asked why they did not choose a route through a less populated area, Suncor’s response was “cost”.

And why are they proposing building a new pipeline when their last ecological disaster is still causing benzene levels in the South Platte River to be 33 parts per billion, which is over 6 times the minimum acceptable levels? Why is Suncor so ready to exercise their right to eminent domain in residential areas just so they can save costs? If you or any of your community members are facing condemnation of your home, or have any questions or concerns about the environmental dangers of this pipeline, please come and have your voice heard!

Colorado Extraction Resistance is committed to fighting poisonous energy industry processes such as hydraulic fracturing & tar sands extraction.

Website: http://ColoradoER.tk
Twitter: @ColoradoER
Like us on Facebook
SMS: text “@DenverDOS” to 23559 to receive notifications on upcoming direct actions. Text “@NoFrackCO” to receive fracking specific updates. Or sign up online at http://Cel.ly

6/27 Suncor expanding its pipeline in Adams County/#fearlesssummer Week of Action

From Colorado Extraction Resistance:

On Thursday 6/27 at 6pm Adams County Planning Commission is holding a hearing at (4430 South Adams County Parkway Ste W2000A Brighton CO) allowing Suncor to rebuild its existing pipeline from the northern border of Adams County to the Suncor refinery in Commerce City. Suncor wants to replace their current 10-inch crude oil pipeline with 16-inch to increase capacity.

As part of the #fearlesssummer Week of Action we are ready to show up and pose some questions to the planning commission:

Isn’t a bigger pipeline a bigger risk if it leaks?

Do they really know the impact increasing capacity will have on the environment, and the health of the community?

Do they really trust Suncor when they have proven to be grossly negligent in cleaning up their existing leaks in commerce city?

Does the planning commission have any good recipes for summer iced drinks with “cancer-causing benzene?”

From May 15th 2013 “After 18 months of cleanup around Suncor’s oil refinery, contamination of the South Platte River is diminishing, but concentrations of cancer-causing benzene in the water remain six times higher than the national safety standard.” More info here.

Maybe Suncor could use the money they have set aside to expand this pipeline to clean up their existing toxic mess that keeps going on and on while they profit off of our damaged environment and polluted drinking water? And their solution of aerating the benzene out of the water just pollutes the air. They need to shut down their plant until they can guarantee not to poison us.

Just some thoughts that can be shared with the planning commission board this Thursday. See you there!

And if you can’t make it, email your comments to CLaRue@adcogov.org

Planning Commissioners

Vince Buzek January 31, 2016

Rosie Garner January 31, 2016

Paul Tochtrop January 31, 2015

Sharon Richardson January 31, 2015

Nick DiTirro January 31, 2014

Michael DeMattee January 31, 2014

Steward Mosko January 31, 2014

Harry Gibney, Alternate January 31, 2014

Gary Pratt, Alternate January 31, 2014