The Reality Associated With Pipelines

There is a move under way to put a Liquefied Natural Gas Pipeline terminal in town on the side of the Columbia River. The facility is planned to be a few miles from where the river opens up to the Ocean and a few miles from where I live.

From 1986 to 2013 over 7000 Pipeline failures have occurred in the U.S. killing over 500 people. Over 2000 people have been injured and nearly 7 billion dollars of property damage have resulted from pipeline failures.

Like many people across the nation our lives and health are imperiled by projects like these associated with energy extraction and delivery activities. You can get an idea how safe these pipelines are at this website.  Recently a jury awarded nearly 3 million dollars against one corporate polluter in Texas.

The video inside the link is a short animation of a map of the U.S. Beginning in 1986. A dot is placed in every location where there was a pipeline failure. Along the bottom a script of the dirty details of spills, deaths, injuries and property damage appear.

If you are not appalled at the number of dots on the map at the end you are probably in favor of the program of the carbon mongers.

It is not only if and when a pipeline breaks that ecological damage and death result. Far more are killed by the successful delivery of the product by means of air pollution the product causes. One in eight deaths are associated with air pollution.

The carbon mongers have the money needed to get politicians to make the laws they like. The politicians make those laws for them setting the stage for scenarios like this to become future problems.

In 1970 congress was in favor of fresh air and water and an unpolluted environment.  1970 was the year of the first Earth Day.  A history of the modern ecological movement is available here.  It was popular to want to protect the earth from unscrupulous 

corporate polluters.  

Today those notions do not come easily from the lips of elected representatives.  Today carbon is the savior they look to for economic restoration. Restoring the environment and protecting the environment is not the priority it was in 1970. Today the Congressperson’s concern for the viability of the environment is moderated by the prospect of industrial expansion, jobs and profit.

The local paper covered a small protest of the planned LNG terminal. Read it here. The scarcity of employment in the area and the hope of future jobs make some willing to accept the risk.   The carbon mongers certainly hope the people are hungry enough to exchange the possibility of losing fresh air and water for jobs. The people here have their backs against the wall as do many communities across the nation.

A previous LNG terminal proposal was turned down by the people last year after a struggle lasting years. But this year the carbon mongers are back with the same old catastrophe to sell to a desperate economically challenged community where 7.2 percent of the people cannot find a job. It appears likely the LNG advocates will not stop until they get what they want.

This product will be sold overseas to people who will burn it adding to global air pollution.  As has been shown they will send the dirty products of combustion back across the ocean on air currents to rest here in the nearby mountain ranges polluting the land and air the product came from.

While thinking about this catastrophe waiting in the wings I made a little video from pictures of the locality and artwork. In the opening sequences is the beautiful blue Youngs Bay and on the left toward the top is the approximate location of the proposed terminal.  The video transitions to the seashore with people playing, and to hillside trails overlooking the sky blue Pacific; then it abruptly changes from serene natural beauty to a projection of what the scenery may be like when an industrial complex is located on the shoreline. If you like it, pass it on. Silence is assent.

Photography and Art by David H. Roche (C) 2014