A very interesting article at Daily Kos has been posted. Title: There’s been HOW many pipeline spills in Alberta in the last four months?

Seems the Canadian news system does not find oil, gas and toxic water spills from the mining of carbon fuels to be newsworthy.   But, the native Indian sure find it news worthy. Their news outlet, West Coast Native News has been tracking all the spills. You know, it’s there yard getting contaminated.

The Kos article quotes WCNN:

Over the past year WCNN has reported on many Crude oil and Toxic produced water spills all over Alberta, in fact we have reported over 600,000 Litres of toxic crap that has been spilled just last month and yet not one mainstream media outlet has picked up the incidents. So lets take a look back at just the last month (October) and see just what the mainstream is not telling you.

Of that 600,000 liters (165,107.5 gallons or 3931 barrels) 136,000 is crude oil. That is, for us non metric thinkers, 35,927.4 gallons or 855.41 barrels of crude oil spilled in one month. How long has there been mining in the area with pipeline transportation?

You can go here to get the raw data from the regulatory agency, Alberta Energy Regulator. The volumes are in cubic meters however.  In the month of October there are 46 spills reported, well or pipeline. Twenty three (23) are pipeline spills.  Four of those pipeline spills are crude oil.  There are at total of 10 crude oil spills including the 4 pipeline spills. The other spills are some mixture of water (salt or fresh) with petroleum, or raw gas releases, contaminated water, etc.  NONE of them are listed as having an emergency status phase.

The author of the article at Daily Kos writes:

I noticed that in the report of an incident document, every single report mentions that no effects to wildlife or waterways occurred… WHAT??

Interesting?

Examples of 3 reported pipeline failures:

Release of emulsion from a pipeline migrating to a low dry bog area. Fluids have been contained, and company has started deliniation and cleanup. Area will be fensed off to limit wildlife access. No reported impacts to any water body or wildlife.

Release of Crude Oil due to a pipeline failure. Clean up is underway. No reported impacts to a waterbody or wildlife.

Release of Crude Oil due to a pipeline failure. Mitigation including sampling and removal impacted vegetation . No reported impacts to a waterbody or wildlife.

So, we’ll be getting jobs alrighty. They will be clean up and repair jobs involving environmental personnel and tech/science jobs for those trying to find ways to clean up this mess to that there are for real ” No reported impacts to any water body or wildlife.”  Jobs for those tech/science people figuring out how to transport the cleaned up toxic waste with out spilling it.   

And jobs for those manning the toxic waste disposal facilities.  And jobs for those transporting the toxic waste. Then we’ll have jobs for the lawyers sorting out the civil suites do to pollution and the lawyers lobbying congress to keep it all under wraps.  And jobs for the advertising agencies, those trying to make the public aware and those trying to blind the public (probably more of these later that the former). 

Jobs for those trying to figure out how to get fresh water to the public. (Remember, those around the Great Lakes are all ready saying no way to pumping from there.)  There will probably be a new area of agriculture over time: Farming in the oil polluted environment.  You know, for all those farmers who might find their land changing over time considering the route of the XL.

Yup, the XL pipe line sure is a jobs creation program.