Protesters Hilariously Troll DINO Senator With Inflatable KXL Pipeline On Her Lawn

[Not Sure]

79. Safer.

Rail can be routed around sensitive areas; the KXL's route is precisely the problem.
A spill from a railcar would empty at most 30,000 gallons of crude; a spill from a pipeline would force vast quantities of crude under great pressure through the void in the pipeline until valves could be closed.
A railcar spills the oil on the ground surface where it can be contained in most cases; the pipeline is located underground and even a slow leak can easily go undetected doing great damage.

Accidents can and do happen with rail. New railcars are designed to withstand a greater impact than the cars involved in the Lac Megantic disaster. A number of rule changes have occurred since then that restrict how cars carrying dangerous goods are handled, including limiting the speed at which these trains travel. Additionally, new rules govern how these trains are secured when they must be left unattended.

Rail isn't a perfect mode to transport crude oil, chlorine, anhydrous ammonia or any other dangerous product. But it is the safest mode there is. Pipelines lose more product as a matter of course than railcars. A leaking railcar is easy to identify (all trains are required to have a visual inspection as they pass each other), where a leaking pipeline can allow product to seep into the ground and groundwater undetected for years. A catastrophic breach of a railcar is immediately obvious to the train crew or people nearby. A catastrophic breach of a pipeline may not be detected by the operator at all and instead may be discovered the hard way by people in the spill zone. See the Mayflower Oil Spill, where 5,000 to 7,000 barrels of crude oil (equivalent to 7 to 10 railcars) spilled: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Mayflower_oil_spill


A spill like Mayflower isn't just a scary potential, it is a certainty with KXL. There is no remediation for the Ogallala Aquifer when it occurs. I recognize this tar sands oil will get to market, but it needs to follow the least environmentally hazardous path possible. When the pro-KXL side is proven wrong, I don't want to see generations of Americans suffer the consequences of a bad bet made by willfully ignorant wingnuts whose only concern is profit. And from my perspective, the upfront cost to do this right isn't that much greater than to do it wrong. This is a matter of the public being forced to bend over and take it.

I designed pipelines for oil companies years ago. I've seen the checks that go to the landowners to compensate for the use of their land. I've seen the checks that go to the construction companies who install the pipeline. I've see the checks that go to the design engineer. I've seen how money is thrown at problems to make them go away. I've seen an entitled attitude of "ask forgiveness, not permission" permeate the industry, which leads to build it now, build it cheap and fix it later when it breaks. There is a lot of money available to ease the conscience of those who have doubts about whether what they are doing is ethical. After many years of single-handedly trying to hold various midstream clients' feet to the fire, I couldn't take it and changed careers.

Now I work for a railroad where one of the commodities I'm charged with transporting is crude oil. I am empowered to do my job safely and so are my union brothers and sisters. We take this job seriously and would rather not turn a wheel at all if it means we cannot do it without causing harm to each other or to the communities we travel through. I've worked in one kind of dangerous safety related job or another my entire adult life. This industry is the first where all the talk and action regarding safety aren't just ineffective window dressing to make the company look better. It's not perfect, but it is a far cry from the culture of deception, profit over safety and boom/bust get it done now! mentality of the oil industry.