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Via Public Citizen:

Winnsboro, Texas – Dozens of anomalies, including dents and welds, reportedly have been identified along a 60-mile stretch of the southern segment of the Keystone XL pipeline, north of the Sabine River in Texas.

In the past two weeks, landowners have observed TransCanada and its vendor, Michels, digging up the buried southern segment of the Keystone XL pipeline on their properties and those of neighbors in the vicinity of Winnsboro, Texas. Some of the new pipeline has been in the ground on some owners’ land for almost six months. It is believed that problems identified on this section of the Keystone XL route must have triggered the current digging, raising questions from landowners about the safety of the pipeline and the risk to personal property and water supplies. [...]

The proposed branch of the Keystone XL pipeline is likely to increase gas prices for Americans, contradicting claims by pipeline proponents, a recent Public Citizen report found.

Please read their entire post.

And please take a look at my post from yesterday, VIDEO: Keystone XL tar sands “isn’t oil. This is a pipe-eating, planet-cooking, water-fouling goo. You can’t clean up tar.” As I said in that one, I would like nothing more than to stop writing about the tar sands pipeline (scroll), but I can’t. I have to do my part to make sure more people have the facts about this disaster-in-waiting.

It is worth repeating for the umpteenth time, it’s the “biggest carbon bomb on the planet.” Think Progress and Van Jones both remind us that the project will create only 35 permanent jobs, but will emit 51 coal plants’ worth of carbon. Plus, much of the oil would be exported elsewhere. We’d be way better off investing in clean energy instead of a costly, dirty catastophe-in-waiting like the tar sands mess.

Despite the fact that in a recent Gallup poll, nearly half in the U.S. say government should do more to protect environment, and that 20 scientists pulled out of the project, and that the Arkansas pipeline rupture foreshadows devastating environmental impact, it looks like the State Dep’t. and the president are leaning toward approving Keystone, even though it would bring the dirtiest oil on earth through America.

Bill McKibben and NASA’s Jim Hansen both warn that it would be “essentially game over for the climate” if this crackpot project gets the go-ahead.

Need more convincing? This video via PublicCitizenTX is a must-see:

Please watch the entire thing, it’s not long:

“I thought I was gonna have grass growing again. Now this spot will probably never grow grass, because they’ll never get the topsoil in place… I became disenchanted.”

“Right over here beside my pickup… I saw one of their employees… crawl through my new fence. I don’t know whether the other employees I saw trespassing on my land crawled through he fence, but then I saw the 2 of them were dragging their drainage hose over to this little creek right here that runs directly into the big creek.. I saw them putting a hose in there…”

“One of them just stood and urinated facing my house.”

“That pipeline could come within 25 feet of your home… If it leaks, of course it’s gonna go down into the water table… It’s full of … toxic chemicals. That gives you pause to think about, you know, what if? How damaging could that be?”

“I can’t understand why they would have to be digging up pipes that have just been in the ground a few months, and they’re already having trouble with them? So that worries me.“

“I heard that… they had 70 anomalies that they had found problems. I think on a new pipe that’s excessive to have that many problems in such a short time.”

“They’ve had a lot of trouble with erosion…”

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