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July 15, 2013

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Late this afternoon I attended a Enbridge seminar in Rushville Illinois concerning the Flanagan pipeline. The seminar was well planned, interesting and pretty slick public relations wise. Considering that Enbridge is planning on starting construction next month(Aug) the meeting seemed very late in the process to me. But I'm sure they had their reasons for it being so late and they weren't good.

Two things I learned really struck me and concerned me. The fifty years old or older Spearhead pipeline is carrying Tar Sands oil (diluted bitumen) at least part of the time under the Illinois River and through the Mahomet-Teays aquifer. They didn't tell me, but it was pretty easy to figure out. That's serious because diluted bitumen(dilbit) sinks in water making it almost impossible to clean up. Enbridge dumped over a million gallons of Tar Sands (Dilbit) in the Kalamazoo River 2 years ago; has spent 750 million cleaning the river and has a long way to go. Enbridge was recently fined 3 million dollars because they knew their Michigan pipeline had problems for 5 years and did nothing about it resulting in the Kalamazoo River tragedy. Makes me wonder about viability of the Spearhead pipeline as a environmentally safe way of carrying Tar Sands Oil. What isn't Enbridge doing about that pipeline that they should be doing?

Secondly I talked to one of the presenters about the Mahomet-Teays aquifer and whether it's considered a wetland. Apparently some of it is. A good part of it is just South of Havana called Sand Lake. The pipeline goes through that area. He mentioned that the Army Corp of Engineers has to approve it. On the way home I was thinking about never having heard of any hearing sponsored by the Army Corp of Engineers. The article by the Illinois Sierra Club explained that.

Todays meeting in Rushville would give anyone the impression that Enbridge is a fantastic corporation doing a great job working for all of us and protecting the environment; if you didn't know about their past history, which tells us just the opposite.

For Christ's sake Elly, I swear you'd have us go back to the 1600's.

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