Defender in Chief

Edward Abbey wrote that "the idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders." Early this year, I called on President Obama to step up and start defending wilderness by using the powers of the executive branch to do what Congress has been unable or unwilling to accomplish. Although he's been a great president for the environment in many ways, Obama was lagging when it came to protecting public lands that could otherwise be lost to development, drilling, or mining.

Gradually, that has started to change. First came the welcome news that the president had designated his second national monument -- Fort Ord, near Monterey Bay. Then, just this week, his administration proposed a management plan for the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska that keeps several important wildlife areas off-limits to oil and gas drilling, including critical habitat and breeding grounds for caribou and migratory birds.

In the coming months, I expect there will be more announcements from the White House of new protections for public lands. Congress, unfortunately, is unlikely to get anything done owing to a partisan dispute on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Even a simple matter like upgrading California's Pinnacles National Monument to a national park, which has already passed the House and has strong bipartisan support, faces an uphill battle to reach the Senate floor before the current session ends and proponents have to start all over again.

What's especially frustrating about this gridlock is that the majority of Americans recognize the value of protecting our most precious public lands. What's more, the most likely candidates for protection as national monuments enjoy strong support from nearby communities. That's because people know that protecting these special places also boosts local economies.

For now, though, it's up to President Obama to move more of these national monument designations across the finish line. You can help us encourage him by joining our "My Piece of America" campaign. Already, more than 3,000 people have uploaded photos of their favorite places in America to our online map. As a bonus, the Sierra Club will give away one trip for two on a Sierra Club kayak outing to Florida's Everglades.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar described the western Arctic lands that will be protected from drilling as "an iconic place on our Earth." In fact, our planet has many iconic places that need protection, and more than a few of them are right here in the United States. Time to play some defense, Mr. President.

Shelter in Place

For thousands of people in the San Francisco Bay Area communities of Richmond, North Richmond, San Pablo, and El Cerrito, last Monday was a night of terror.

Explosions and a massive fire shook Chevron's giant refinery in Richmond starting around 6:15 p.m. Our own Jessica Meskus, the associate art director of Sierra magazine, lives about four miles from the refinery and got home at about 6:30:

I heard the sirens go off. It happens every once in a while. I've lived there three years. When it happens, you close your doors and windows, and you wait for someone to tell you what's going on. So I went outside to get Wilma, my tortoise, from the backyard and make sure my dogs Lex, Leela, and Moose were inside. As I bent down to pick up Wilma, I heard the second explosion and saw a huge plume of black smoke lift into the sky.

As soon as I heard the explosion, I yelled at my husband and screamed at our neighbors to lock up their house. We live downwind and it was coming straight at us. The sirens were going. We didn't know if it was an attack or something else. When you live in Richmond, you know there's a refinery there. But you just hope that it's safe.

It was about 15 minutes before anything came on the news. We had no warning call, which we get sometimes. We didn't know if we should jump in the car or what. The smoke completely blocked the sun.

Thankfully, only two minor injuries from the explosion were reported at the refinery and among the 100 firefighters who battled for five hours to contain the blaze. But that 4,000-foot high plume of black smoke that blacked out the sun was visible from all over the Bay Area, and it was filled with particulate matter, sulfur compounds, and other toxins. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that area hospitals logged 1,700 emergency room visits by people suffering from respiratory problems, vomiting, severe headaches and more.

Jessica and her husband followed the standard procedure to "shelter in place":

We stayed in our house and sealed the doors with painter's tape. Some people use plastic and cover the whole thing. Luckily, we have good airtight windows. My husband still woke up with inflamed throat the next morning.

A Chevron spokesperson apologized for "inconveniencing our neighbors." But the knowledge that it's not safe to breathe in your own home is not an inconvenience, it's terror. Going to the emergency room is always scary, but going to an ER that's seeing hundreds of other people for similar symptoms, while a black mushroom cloud spreads over your neighborhood? That's terror.

It's also part of a pattern of failure by Chevron and regulators to protect the public. In 2010, Chevron agreed to install a real-time ground level air-monitoring system to detect hazardous air pollution in communities near the refinery. Now, state regulators are saying that there is little risk, but you can't find what you don't look for... that monitoring system was never installed.

A spokesperson for California's Division of Occupational Safety and Health said, "Investigators have notified us that Chevron's emergency response was excellent." But Chevron knew about a leak at about 4:15. They didn't shut down the plant. And they waited to report a problem, despite the requirement that it report emergencies like this immediately. The San Jose Mercury News has reported on how the emergency warning system failed. Jessica notes that she "never heard from Chevron or authorities." Her first thoughts on hearing the explosion were to protect her pets and to warn her neighbors -- a lesson lost on Chevron.

To add insult to injury, now Chevron and its apologists have tried to blame its problems on community members who stopped an expansion of the massive refinery. But the Sierra Club, and the refinery workers whom we collaborate with through the BlueGreen Alliance, know that the only thing standing in the way of safety improvements at the Richmond refinery is Chevron itself.

Residents of the East Bay -- and that includes Berkeley and Oakland, which are also downwind of the plant -- must now contend with the aftermath of toxic smoke that made its way into the homes and lungs of an entire community. The most vulnerable, those with asthma or other health problems that compromise their bodies' defenses, will not just be "inconvenienced." And everyone, no matter how healthy, faces unknown long-term health effects. That is terror.

The Sierra Club stands with Communities for a Better Environment in demanding a few obvious things from Chevron and from the State of California:

• A community-based investigation of the accident, paid for by Chevron but independent and overseen by members of the community. We need to know went wrong and how this kind of accident can be prevented.
• Broader community compensation that goes beyond reimbursing medical bills and firefighting costs. When the BART system shut down, for instance, it isolated communities and people lost work.
• Chevron needs to stop blaming everyone else for its problems. This argument, in the words of Richmond community organizer Andres Soto, is both disingenuous and outrageous: "The crude unit that exploded had nothing to do with Chevron's expansion proposal."

Another of the Sierra Club's local partners, the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, notes that Chevron had $13.7 billion in profits in the first two quarters of 2012 and asks, "how much is enough to assure safety of this refinery?"

At a facility that is California's  #1 producer of greenhouse gasses, in a county that produces more hazardous materials per capita and square mile than any other in the state, Chevron must do a lot better.

True Colors

Although he's said and done some odd things in his day ("corporations are people"; dogs are luggage), I doubt anyone would argue that Mitt Romney's completely off his rocker. So why did he just announce his opposition to one of the biggest American success stories of the past decade?

The U.S. wind energy industry not only supports 75,000 jobs across the country but also has emerged as an important energy source. By the end of this year, seven states will get more than 10 percent of their total electricity from wind. Two states, South Dakota and Iowa, currently generate more than 20 percent of their electricity from wind power. On its present track, the wind industry will produce at least 20 percent of the entire country's electricity by 2030, probably more.

That won't happen, though, if Romney gets his wish and Congress allows the American Renewable Energy Production Tax Credit (PTC, for short) for wind energy to expire at the end of this year. Without the PTC, the U.S. wind industry will contract -- losing as many as 37,000 U.S. jobs in the process.

It does seem crazy to come out in favor of forcing thousands of Americans out of work at a time when jobs and the economy are the top two issues on voters' minds. In Iowa, where the Republican governor joined the state's entire congressional delegation in support of extending the PTC, the reaction ranged from stunned disbelief to anguished outrage.

Of course, after a summer of extreme heat, drought, and wildfires (in June, the lower 48 states were 2 degrees F. warmer than the 20th century average), it seems beyond crazy to put the brakes on wind power, which can help to replace carbon-polluting coal and natural gas power plants. Then again, that particular craziness is officially sanctioned by much of the current Republican leadership, so it's not quite as surprising that Romney would subscribe as well.

The official rationale for Romney's opposition to the tax credit is that he doesn't believe in energy subsidies. Unless, of course, those subsidies are already going to Big Oil.  

And there's the rub. What's really happening here is that Mitt Romney is showing his true colors. The loss of thousands of jobs means little when weighed against the interests of the Koch brothers, the American Petroleum Institute, and a fossil-fuel industry that could spend up to $1 billion during this election.

Of course, dirty energy industries have to spend that kind of money because their message (dirty energy is better than clean energy; killing clean energy jobs is better than creating clean energy jobs) is an insult to common sense.

Advocates for wind and other clean energy sources, on the other hand, don't have a billion dollars. Not even close. What we do have on our side, though, is the truth. We need wind power. We need the energy it produces and the jobs it supports. And if we care about stabilizing our climate, then we need clean energy from wind to replace carbon-polluting energy sources like coal, gas, and oil.

The Production Tax Credit is currently stalled in Congress, but it's already garnered significant bipartisan support, including 25 Republican cosponsors in the House. Let's hope this critical element of our national clean energy strategy isn't left twisting in the wind.

The Sierra Club Voter Education Fund seeks to educate voters about the records of the 2012 GOP presidential candidates by highlighting their extreme positions on public health and other issues of critical importance to the American people and encourage the public to find out more about the candidates and their positions on these issues.

Sierra y la Tierra

You're probably already aware that Latinos are the fastest growing segment of American society. Latino influence on our economy, our culture, and our politics will only increase in the coming years.

But what about the environment? Where do Hispanics in the United States stand on issues like clean energy, protection for wilderness, and climate change?

New information shows Latino support for environmental issues is stronger than ever.

Together with the National Council of La Raza, the Sierra Club recently led a nationwide survey of Latino voters and their environmental concerns and priorities. This was a follow-up to a Sierra Club  2008 survey of Latino voters, which was the first of its kind. This project included focus groups with registered Latino voters in Houston and Los Angeles, followed by a bilingual phone poll of 1,131 registered Latino voters across the country.

Here are five key takeaways from the survey:

1. Overall, Latinos are strongly pro-environment. In both the focus groups and phone poll, Latino voters consistently expressed a strong desire to protect the environment and move toward a clean energy future.
2. Nearly all Latino voters (91 percent) view outdoor activities as important to their way of life and support environmental safeguards that protect their family, community, and culture. Substantial numbers take advantage of public outdoor spaces, and nearly seven in ten Latino voters favor designating more existing public lands as national monuments.
3. Many Latinos have firsthand reasons to distrust polluters -- they report that they live or work near toxic sites. Many also have family members whose health was affected by environmental pollution. Nearly half of respondents (47 percent) reported that they or someone in their family has faced asthma, and 41 percent reported the same thing about cancer. Since 2008, their concern over the pollution of air and water has grown by 10 points.
4. Latinos are as concerned about jobs and the economy as any other group, but they overwhelmingly believe that conservation and clean-energy solutions will function as job creators. A hefty 86 percent of Latino voters report that they would prefer the U.S. to invest in clean, renewable energy sources rather than fossil fuels. Further, Latino voters almost unanimously said they would prefer to work in the clean energy industry over the fossil fuel industry, provided salary and benefits are equal.
5. Global climate change? Nine in ten Latino voters believe that global climate change is already happening or will happen in the future. That may help explain why nearly six in ten Latino voters are willing to pay more each month on their electricity bill to have their home’s electricity come from clean sources.

We learned a lot more, of course, and you can get the details here.

Of course, for anyone who's been paying attention, this survey confirms something that should have been obvious all along. After all, Latinos led the defense of California's climate legislation (Proposition 23), and Latino communities have been among those leading the fight against incinerators and toxic dumps for decades. For those who haven't been paying attention, though, seeing just how deep and broad the support for environmental issues runs among Latino voters ought to be a wake-up call.

We Are the Kalamazoo

Susan Connolly lives in Marshall, a picturesque small town in southern Michigan. The highlights of the year in Marshall are usually the Labor Day historic home tour and the annual Christmas Parade. On July 25, 2010, though, an oil company called Enbridge spilled more than a million gallons of toxic tar sands crude from a pipeline into Talmadge Creek, just a few miles from Susan's house. As the spill spread to the Kalamazoo River, Susan, her husband, and their two small children could smell the fumes from their home the next morning. But it wasn't until later that night that they realized something was seriously wrong:

My husband and I dropped off our children and headed to work. We still didn't know anything was going on. We just knew there was an odor in the air. When we picked up the children that evening, people were talking about something strange going on. The spill was now on the news. But nothing official, no warnings. That evening, my son was throwing up. My daughter, within a few days of the spill, developed a strange rash. My daughter was only two, and my son was four-and-a-half.

Children and staff were getting sick at the daycare -- migraine headaches, nausea, diarrhea, strange rashes, burning in the eyes and throat. None of the health officials would associate the sickness to the oil spill. They wouldn't say much of anything.

Last week, federal regulators handed down a $3.7 million penalty along with a stinging indictment of Enbridge for its negligent management of the pipeline, its incompetent emergency response, and its lack of transparency. Enbridge's first reaction to the spill had been to act like the substance pouring from the six-and-a-half-foot gash in its pipe was conventional crude oil -- rather than highly toxic tar sands mixed with volatile cancer-causing chemicals.

Public health officials -- the local, state and federal health experts who families relied on during the crisis -- also downplayed the risk. When the thick tar sands sank into the river, though, the toxic chemicals that are used to thin out the asphalt-like tar sands evaporated into the air.

Susan remembers asking whether her children were at a higher risk:

I'm a parent, trying to make decisions about what to do in a crisis, and I'm told by the Health Department, by the county and the state, and by the unified command that everything is okay, that our children are fine, our children are safe.

For two years they said, "Oh, no. It's all the same readings, it's all the same levels, it's all the same exposure." And now, two years later, they say that children are at a higher risk. How dare they do that to us!

In fact, both Enbridge and the federal regulators whose job it is to ensure the safety of these kinds of pipelines knew as early as 2005 that the pipeline was unsafe.

Susan:

A week or two before the spill, Enbridge had requested yet another delay on a Corrective Action Order to repair a flaw in their pipeline. They knew about a problem in their pipe and used bureaucratic maneuvering to put off fixing it for years. Federal pipeline-safety authorities knew about the problems too. It is a shared negligence.

Although Enbridge knew its pipeline was ready to fail, the actual break went undetected for more than 17 hours, in spite of supposedly high-tech leak-detection technology. Twice, Enbridge pressurized the broken pipe until, finally, a gas company employee on the ground alerted the company to a problem. Deborah Hersman, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, put it this way: "Learning about Enbridge's poor handling of the rupture, you can't help but think of the Keystone Kops... Why didn't they recognize what was happening? What took so long?"

To this day, poison remains in the 38 miles of Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River that were contaminated.

Susan is incredulous:

Come see what the river looks like, even after a $800 million cleanup. Come see what the riverbank looks like, and just how much submerged oil is still here. All you have to do is agitate the water, and it comes up. Enbridge says there are still 390 acres of submerged oil. And somehow the cleanup is done?

Susan Connolly is brave to speak out about her experience and her fears. She's facing down wealthy oil companies that wield enormous influence with the same public officials whose job it is supposed to be to protect her and her family. Here at the Sierra Club, we're doing everything we can to support families like Susan's around the nation that are threatened by tar sands pipelines. But too many Americans still don't realize how dangerous tar sands oil really is.

Beginning this weekend, the Sierra Club and its allies will hold We Are the Kalamazoo events across North America to mark this two-year anniversary of the largest and most toxic inland oil spill in U.S. history. Human oil spills and other actions are planned in Michigan, Connecticut, Maine, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Portland-Montréal (Canada), South Dakota, and Washington. The events will culminate in a rally for a "tar sands-free" Northeast outside the New England Governors' Conference in Vermont in response to Big Oil's plans to move tar sands through New England.

Next week, the National Academy of Sciences will begin a scientific review of the dangers of transporting tar sands crude from Alberta, Canada, to U.S. ports. The scientists and engineers on the National Academy's panel have been asked by Congress to determine whether tar sands pipelines are more dangerous than conventional crude oil pipelines. These scientists should bring their best scientific thinking to the job of assessing the real risks of tar sands pipelines, but they shouldn't forget that this is no academic exercise.

Real people and families will be forced to live with the consequences of tar sands catastrophes like the Enbridge spill. The National Academy panel should accept Susan Connolly's standing offer to come visit Marshall, Michigan, and the Kalamazoo River. They should see for themselves what a tar sands disaster looks like.

Stop the Frack Attack

One of the worst things about natural gas fracking is how helpless it can make someone feel when drilling threatens their water or besieges their home. It's easy for one person, one family, or even one community to believe they're outmatched by a wealthy industry with powerful friends in government.

The truth is, though, that we're not alone. By coming together, we can ultimately make the gas industry stop all dirty and dangerous drilling and put communities and our air, water, and atmosphere first.

One way to join forces is to get involved in the Sierra Club's Beyond Natural Gas campaign or any of the many local campaigns that have sprung up to hold frackers accountable. But there's no substitute for putting a face  -- a lot of faces, actually -- on the issue by going to Washington, D.C., and telling our leaders in person that we want them to move our country toward a clean energy future where drilling for natural gas no longer threatens our environment, air, and water.

That's why the Sierra Club is joining with dozens of other organizations in a coalition to Stop the Frack Attack. On Saturday, July 28, thousands of us will rally in Washington, D.C. to send a message to President Obama, Congress, and the EPA about our fracking concerns. We'll do more than just gather on the Capitol lawn, though. There also will be opportunities in the preceding week to visit elected officials, to dig deeper into the issues around fracking, to develop the organizational skills to fight fracking on the ground, and to network with allies. (For a complete schedule of events, see http://www.stopthefrackattack.org/schedule/)

The natural gas industry is powerful. What regulations do exist for fracking are poorly enforced. Fracking and other phases of natural gas production are exempt from many of the safeguards provided by the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and other fundamental environmental protections. The predictable result: dirty water, dirty air, and water you'd think twice before drinking.

Together, though, we can change that. No industry, no matter how wealthy or powerful, can withstand the righteous indignation of the American public. The out-of-control rush to drill has put oil and gas industry profits ahead of our health, our families, our property, our communities, and our futures. Special industry exemptions from basic environmental protections make no sense -- let's get them removed.

Everyone wants to see a clean energy future, but to really make it happen takes more than wishful thinking. Join us in Washington, D.C., from July 25-28 to tell Congress and the Obama administration to end gas drilling that harms public health, water and air quality, and the climate.

Saving a Piece of Paradise

Late June brought several pieces of great environmental news: Colorado's Roan Plateau was spared from oil and gas drilling, and the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the EPA's position that the Clean Air Act requires the federal government to impose limits on greenhouse gas emissions from industry and vehicles.

But neither of those victories registered with the youngest environmentalists in the Brune household like the news that Puerto Rico Governor Luis Fortuño had signed a law protecting nearly 2,000 acres of the island's Northeast Ecological Corridor from development.

The leatherback sea turtles get to keep their nesting grounds.

Two years ago, not long after I started with the Sierra Club, our family visited Puerto Rico, which has the Club's newest Chapter. We'd timed our visit to coincide with the Festival del Tinglar (Festival of the Sea Turtle), put on every year by the Puerto Rico Sierra Club and the Coalition for the Northeast Ecological Corridor.

When we arrived at the festival, Puerto Rico Chapter Director Camilla Feibelman greeted my wife and me briefly, and then turned her full attention to our kids, Olivia and Sebastian. Their eyes grew wide as they listened to tales of newly hatched baby sea turtles breaking for the sea and flopping across the sand as fast as their tiny flippers can propel them.

The Corridor is one of the most important nesting grounds on earth for the endangered leatherback sea turtle, but its bioluminescent lagoon, mangrove swamps, coral reefs, and dense tropical rainforest are also home to more than 50 rare, threatened, and native species. "This place is better than Avatar," says Camilla.

Yet for years, the Corridor has been threatened by two proposed mega-resorts that would include 1,900 new residential and tourist units and three golf courses. Needless to say, golf courses and baby sea turtles do not mix.

The next day, we went on a hike through the Corridor's El Yunque rainforest -- the only tropical rainforest in the U.S. Forest Service's jurisdiction -- replete with hanging vines, crags, and waterfalls. We also visited the Corridor's bioluminescent lagoon, which glows an otherworldly shade of green at nighttime when you paddle through the water. And best of all, we were fortunate enough to a giant leatherback lay her eggs on the beach by the full moon’s light.

How did the Puerto Rico Sierra Club and other grassroots groups keep this wondrous place from being turned into condos and putting greens? Through good old-fashioned grassroots organizing -- leading tours, putting on the Sea Turtle Festival, and mobilizing Puerto Rico's citizens to action. As with so many environmental battles -- this one had to be won more than once. In 2008, former Governor Aníbal Acevedo Vilá had designated the Corridor as a nature reserve, only to have his successor, Governor Fortuño, reverse that decision upon taking office in 2009.

Signing this bill represents a remarkable reversal for Fortuño, although in truth, he could hardly have done otherwise. The Puerto Rico House and Senate had passed the bill unanimously, with both local parties joining in their entirety as coauthors.

So to Camilla and all the hundreds of members of the Puerto Rico Sierra Club who have fought for years to protect this pristine piece of paradise -- congratulations and a big thank you from everyone in the Brune family.

Why Elections Matter

We're still months away from Election Day, but big polluters are already spending millions of dollars to attack President Obama and push a reckless agenda that puts their profits before the health of our planet and American families.

In the first three months of 2012, Big Oil and Big Coal groups alone spent more than $16 million attacking President Obama and promoting dirty energy. The coal industry's trade association will add $40 million. The Koch brothers even more than that. Big Oil CEOs are serving as advisers to Mitt Romney and sending tens of millions more to his campaign coffers and Super PACs. These big polluters have made it clear that they will spend and say anything to defeat the president and elect Mitt Romney.

There's a simple reason for all of this. Big polluters know that President Obama has and will continue to take tough stands to defend the health of American families -- and that Mitt Romney will follow the big polluter playbook to the letter.

Just last week, Romney aligned himself with the coal industry and the most extreme congressional Republicans by supporting legislation in the Senate that would have rolled back critical protections that will keep American families safe from mercury pollution. This is nuts. Obama's safeguards to limit mercury pollution and other toxic air emissions is the most effective standard to limit pollution in a decade. It is a landmark step forward that will prevent as many as 11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks, and 130,000 asthma attacks, while saving American families as much as $90 billion in health costs every year.

Thankfully, enough senators stood up for clean air and healthy families to defeat this destructive effort (and President Obama threatened to veto the reckless legislation should it ever reach his desk). But where we would be if Romney were in the White House? Or if politicians bought and paid for by Big Oil controlled the Senate? By leaping into the arms of Big Oil and Big Coal, Romney has taken a stand in direct opposition to so many of the things we care about -- and he'd bring those policies with him to Washington, if elected.

For decades, Sierra Club members and activists across the country have fought to protect our air, our water, and the health of our families from the poisonous mercury pollution pumped out by coal-fired power plants. From city halls to the White House, we demanded that our elected officials stand up to big polluters and act to protect our kids from toxins that can result in birth defects, learning disabilities, deafness, blindness, and even cerebral palsy.

We helped create an historic victory and have great reason to celebrate. But as hard-fought as these victories are, we also know they are precarious. Fossil fuel companies and the executives that run them have made it clear that they will spend anything and say anything to oppose efforts to create a clean energy future. And now we know they have a friend in Mitt Romney.

Fortunately, we have one thing the big polluters will never have -- each other. Across the United States, millions of Americans are standing up for clean energy, clean air and water, and the health of our families. Now that we know the choices, it’s time to do just that, and make our voices heard. Yes, big polluters have a lot of money, but let’s show it’s no match for a clean energy movement - an idea whose time has come.

Paid for by the Sierra Club Political Committee, sierraclub.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

Tar Sands Pipelines Are Even Worse Than You Think

The irony is sharp enough to hurt. Americans are driving less and using less gas when we do drive. U.S. carbon pollution is down. Just about every car dealership in America is offering affordable, practical high gas mileage or zero gas mileage cars. Automakers are making them and the sales numbers show that Americans are buying them. Meanwhile, the Obama administration and automakers are poised to do even better with new standards that will double mileage again and slash pollution from our cars and trucks.

America is on the road to moving beyond oil, but the oil industry hasn't gotten the message, and there's no better evidence than its obsession with tar sands.

We don't need tar-sands oil from Canada, yet Big Oil is determined to force it down our throats anyway -- or at least force us to let them pipe through our nation so they can export it abroad. And now we've got some pretty shocking evidence of just how high a price we could end up paying for their greed.

In 2010, more than 30 miles of the Kalamazoo River was transformed into an environmental disaster zone by a cracked tar sands pipeline and a tar sands pipeline company that neglected to turn off its pumps. Since then, a monumental $700 million cleanup effort has removed more than a million gallons of tar sands crude, along with 17 million gallons of polluted water, and 190,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil and debris. Last week, after two years, the EPA officially reopened the affected section of the river.

Now, though, a just-released in-depth report from Inside Climate News today shows that this massive cleanup effort was in fact a debacle -- a failure that reinforces the reputation of tar sands as the dirtiest oil on earth, exposes the weakness of regulatory oversight, and casts an ominous shadow across the thousands of rivers and streams that millions of Americans who live downstream of proposed tar sands pipelines depend on.

Tar sand spills prove even more toxic and difficult to clean up than typical oil spills. That's because the heavy mixture of oil sand sinks in water, which means that tactics like skimming the surface can't be used. Instead, remediators must try to recover the oil from the bottoms of rivers, reservoirs, or wherever it has spilled -- a far more difficult task. Tar sands already contain high concentrations of heavy metals, and chemical diluents mixed in for transport are also known to be carcinogenic. EPA lab tests following a December 2011 oil leak in Colorado found concentrations of cancer-causing benzene as high as 2,000 parts per billion in the creek where the leak occurred -- well above the 5 ppb national drinking water standard.

This would be bad enough if such spills were rare occurrences -- but they're not. In the past two months alone, three separate tar sands pipelines have reported spills in Canada. Enbridge Inc., whose pipe leaked into the Kalamazoo, reported a spill of 1,450 barrels of oil-sand crude in eastern Alberta just last week, while two other companies cited spills of 3,000 and 5,000 barrels respectively, the former into a reservoir used by a nearby small town.

And Canadian tar sands spills are not limited to Canada. Since May 2011, three major tar sands spills have occurred in North Dakota, Montana, and Colorado. The North Dakota spill was the twelfth from TransCanada's Keystone I pipeline during its first year of operation.

Why are tar sands pipes so accident prone? To pass through the pipelines, tar sands must be brought to extreme temperatures and pressures. Add sand and powerful chemicals to this equation, and you've got a formula for corroding and rupturing steel pipes, leading to breaches that spill toxic goo into aquifers and rivers.

That would be bad enough if oil companies did a good job of maintaining and monitoring these pipeline systems -- but they do not. All of the most significant spills over the last two years were discovered not by the oil companies, but by ordinary citizens. The new report documents how prior to the Michigan spill, Enbridge conducted an "integrity management assessment" with an ultrasonic in-line inspection device. The disastrous spill happened anyway. The same is true of other companies whose pipelines ruptured.

Given the environmental and health consequences of the Enbridge spill, as well as the millions of dollars still being spent to clean it up, Michigan Representative Fred Upton's position on the subject is puzzling at best. After the Kalamazoo spill occurred in his district, he did cosponsor a bill that would hold companies accountable for reporting incidents. But since then, he's come out in support of rebuilding the Enbridge pipeline and constructing even more pipelines, including Keystone XL. Given the inevitability of more spills, Upton is apparently willing to put the health and home of his constituents at risk, for dubious benefits. In a recent interview, Upton claims his constituents will be protected from gasoline price spikes "with the expansion and rebuilding to a number of refineries here." It seems he's forgotten that the Keystone XL pipeline will transport tar sands crude to refineries in Texas for export overseas, making it unlikely that anyone in his district will benefit.

Frequent tar sands spills and their devastating effects in places like Michigan make it clear that by continuing to develop tar sands we're not taking a risk that we will poison our water and land -- we're ensuring it. And all for oil that we don't really need.

"Don't Drink the Water"

The next time you pour yourself a glass of water, spare a thought for Jimmy Hall and his neighbors. Jimmy is the fifth-generation Hall to own property on Mill Creek in Letcher County, Kentucky. He has deep roots in coal country. Back in the late 1800s, his great-great-great grandfather's homestead included an entire mountain range, but mountaintop-removal coal mining has turned his family's special place into a moonscape.

Then the Water Department called.

"'Don't drink the water,' is what they told us," says Jimmy. "They found arsenic and lead from nearby mining operations in my well water. It's not just me -- my neighbors have the same problem. Many of them are chronically ill, and some have died."

Unfortunately, that's not unusual in eastern Kentucky, where rubble and toxic waste from mountaintop-removal coal mining frequently contaminate streams and valleys. In all of Appalachia, mountaintop-removal mining has already damaged or destroyed nearly 2,000 miles of streams. In just the past two decades, more than 500 mountains in Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, western Virginia, and Maryland have been leveled. At the current pace, 1.4 million acres of forests and mountaintops could be destroyed by the end of this decade. Gone forever.

It's a peculiar arrogance that can justify the obliteration of mountains that have stood for nearly 500 million years. But it's not only the mountains that are being destroyed -- it is entire communities and a hard-scrabble culture that has survived for centuries. The people of Appalachia have seen more than their share of hardship, and it's made them tough. But the violence of mountaintop-removal mining -- blasting and bulldozing, air and water contamination, mudslides and floods -- is more than anyone should have to endure.

Why is this still happening in the 21st century? Demand for Appalachian coal is at a historic low. We have better, cleaner ways to generate electricity. We don't need the coal, but we're allowing coal companies to destroy the mountains and poison the land and water anyway. The human toll is high: People living near mountaintop-removal coal mines have significantly higher rates of cardiovascular disease and cancer. That's why Representatives Dennis Kucinich and Louise Slaughter have introduced the Appalachian Communities Health Emergency Act [H.R. 5959], which would place a moratorium on permitting for mountaintop-removal coal mining until health studies are conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services.

One key to fighting back right now: Poisoning people's water is not only wrong, it's against the law. The Clean Water Act sets clear standards for water quality, but in Kentucky's coal country the practice has long been to look the other way. In fact, the state of Kentucky would prefer to keep looking the other way, but the Environmental Protection Agency has fulfilled its responsibility in the past couple of years by vetoing 36 surface-mining permits that didn't include provisions for ensuring water quality. Even though the agency approved many more permits than it rejected, that was enough to spark an uproar in coal country.

So last week, the EPA held hearings in Kentucky on its plans to protect water. Jimmy Hall and other Kentuckians were there to speak out for clean water, but they were outnumbered by hundreds of coal supporters bussed in by The Kentucky Coal Association. Says Jimmy: "They did everything they could to intimidate me and the dozens of other activists who were there. They booed, heckled, and kicked us. Someone even threatened the safety of the representatives from the EPA who were there to listen to us."

Did Jimmy Hall find Big Coal's show of force intimidating? "Not when the health of our children is on the line," he says. "One of my neighbors showed me his well water -- it was rust-colored and cloudy. He's forced to use it for drinking, food preparation, and to bathe his children."

Some of the strangest pro-coal rhetoric came not from the public but from Kentucky government officials who spoke at the hearings: "Environmental permitting is not designed to stop legitimate business activities," said Kentucky Energy and Environment Secretary Leonard K. Peter, who apparently believes that coal mining deserves to operate above the law. Out of 21 Kentucky officeholders at the EPA hearing in Frankfort, only one, Rep. Joni Jenkins, D-Shively, stood up for the EPA and clean water for her constituents.

What the coal companies are doing is wrong, but understandable. But for the state of Kentucky to put Big Coal's interests above the health and safety of its own citizens is reprehensible. For people like Jimmy Hall who have seen their heritage and now their drinking water destroyed by mountaintop-removal mining, the EPA and the Clean Water Act offer the biggest hope of fighting back against Big Coal in the heart of coal country.

But you can help, too. The EPA is accepting comments on its enforcement of the Clean Water Act in Kentucky. Urge them to hold the line for clean water!