Pipeline bigger than Keystone pushed for Wisconsin
Sometimes environmental advocates are represented by their opponents as compulsively opposing progress. Loaded questions are asked whether any product, no matter how many jobs it created, could withstand environmentalists’ criticism if it were likely that it would cause any environmental damage at all.
Besides absolutism, there are also questions about means versus ends. Is it possible, for example, to accept suboptimal manufacturing practices to create environmentally benign products — such as a company that emitted excessive levels of air toxins while manufacturing bicycles or plastic recycling bins?
Or is the opposite possible? Could environmentalists support a fossil fuel project that invested heavily in environmental protection by a company with a superior environmental performance if the project contributed to the planet’s climate change? Suppose the company had no oil spills or pipeline breaks, that water quality was not compromised, workers were safe, and communities were improved by the presence of that company’s mines, pumping stations and pipelines? Could we separate the environmental impact of a product from the process of manufacturing and delivering it?
Oil pipelines are an important case in point. With increasing resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline and other new pipelines to carry Canadian tar sands crude oil to coastal processing facilities, the industry’s new strategy appears to be expanding capacity of existing infrastructure.
Just such an expansion project is proposed by Enbridge for a pipeline that goes from Superior on a southeasterly path right through Wisconsin and south. The proposal for this Enbridge Line 61 has escaped notice until recently. With nine new pumping stations and new storage facilities, it would increase capacity from 400,000 to 560,000 barrels per day in 2014 and 1.2 million barrels in 2015 — significantly more than the 830,000 barrels per day proposed for the Keystone XL pipeline.
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