Keystone Environmental Issues

The project has sparked major environmental concerns, particularly in Nebraska, where the pipeline would elapse over an aquifer that provides drinking water and irrigation to much of the Midwest. Keystone XL threatens extensive underground supplies that once contaminated, cannot be cleaned. There’s no place for toxic oil can go “away” to once it enters an aquifer. Sadly, that is just one of the immense environmental threats Keystone Xl poses. Oil extracted from tar sands are thicker, more acidic, and more corrosive than conventional crude. Transported under inflated pressure, it raises a far greater risk of seeping along the pipeline route. Just recently, on the 16 of November 2017, TransCanada reports that a total of 210,000 gallons of oil leaked in South Dakota. Despite that oil travels most securely by pipeline, reaching its destination safely 99.999 percent of the time, according to the Association of Oil Pipe Lines and the American Petroleum Institute. The consequences of a potential oil spill are catastrophic. Not just to the environment, but to the economy, and to the people. …show more content…
First Nation people have seen first hand, the devastating impact tar sand pollution has. Their normal diet, muskrats and moose, in Canada has been compromised as a result. Wildlife tested high in heavy metals like mercury (Figure 2), according to a study by University of Manitoba environmental science professor Stéphane McLachlan. There is evidence this can cause cancer. In that same University of Manitoba study, researchers studied First Nations peoples living near tar sand production, and found that more than 20 percent had some type of cancer