Mt. Wonalancet, NH, not far from the route of the Portland-Montreal Pipeline (photo: Chris Schoenboem)

Fighting back against Big Oil

Fortunately, New Englanders aren’t known to let themselves get trampled on. Local conservation groups, public health experts and many others has been fighting back against Exxon, bringing widespread attention to the project — enough that we have the support of nearly the entire Congressional delegation from those three states (Senator Ayotte, we’re still waiting on ya). We even managed to get 1,500 people to a rally in Portland back in frigid January, the biggest gathering of any kind in 25 years. Suffice to say, New Englanders care, and we don’t want this dangerous substance pumped through our rivers and forests, threatening species like moose and black bears and contributing to climate change.

The problem is, the US State Department (which is tasked with overseeing the pipeline) doesn’t necessarily notice anything amiss and hasn’t the told the company it can’t proceed without a new permit. The State Department needs to make it clear: if Exxon wants to bring poisonous, climate-wrecking tar sands across Northern New England, the impacts are going to be given a hard look and approval is going to needed. It’s a common sense requirement, just making sure we know the threats and the particulars before giving the green light to Exxon, but State hasn’t gotten involved yet because the company hasn’t made a formal proposal.

And that’s the catch-22: unless the State Department tells them to formalize their plans, Exxon might never get around to filing the paperwork — and they’ve already told regional officials they don’t have to. They’re more than happy to act like the cartoon cat burping up feathers, shrugging its shoulders when you ask what happened to Tweety Bird. But this is real life, and New Englanders want to protect their region and wildlife from spills and climate change.  All risk and no reward does not interest New Hampshire, or Vermont or Maine for that matter.

Mr. Smith (and a bunch more) goes to Washington

New England and DC — culture-wise — may sometimes feel like oil and water, but when actual oil and actual water are in the mix, it’s worth a trip to the nation’s capitol. On Monday, a group from Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont came down to Washington, DC to tell their stories to State Department officials in person. It wasn’t your usual DC lobby trip: Fishermen, retired oil industry lawyers, and a handful of conservationists all made the rounds of Capitol Hill, meeting with agencies and Congressional offices with a simple request: Can someone PLEASE make sure this tar sands plan is carefully reviewed?

Our hometown lobby team at the State Department (photo: Peter LaFontaine/NWF)

Pushing toxic, spill-prone tar sands through Exxon’s pipeline across Maine is an all-risk, no-reward proposition. The health of Maine people, our economy, and our way of life, depend on clean water for drinking, tourism, our fishing industry, and recreation. - Lisa Pohlmann, Natural Resources Council of Maine

We plan to keep the heat on Exxon and the State Department, and our group also got a chance to sit down with (deep breath…) the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, to talk about updating our nation’s safety standards for tar sands projects like the Northeast pipeline and Keystone XL. After Mayflower — and Kalamazoo, before that — we can’t trust the industry to operate safely, or even to tell us what they have planned for our back yards.

It can be hard to tell with federal agencies, but I think State got the message.

Tell the US State Department to protect New England’s wildlife and communities from this dangerous and polluting project. Say “NO!” to the Portland-Montreal tar sands pipeline.

NTSB Photo – Ruptured Enbridge tar sands pipeline, Line 6B

Big Oil is trying to keep this project under the radar and avoid a scrutinizing presidential permitting process. A presidential permit is required for any project that crosses the American border and since the Exxon & Enbridge pipeline would cross into Canada, the permit requires that the administration assess the project and allow for public discussion (think Keystone XL).

Exxon & Enbridge Pipeline Project Under Scrutiny

Legislators from Vermont, Maine, & New Hampshire are joining tens of thousands of Northeast residents in speaking out against this proposed project. Out of the 12 northeast congressional members in the pipeline right of way states (VT, ME, NH), only Senator Kelly Ayotte from New Hampshire has yet to stand with her community in opposing the project. Members are sending letter after letter after letter urging Secretary Kerry to require a new presidential permit for the proposed Exxon & Enbridge pipeline project.

When Senators Susan Collins and Angus King of Maine were visited by the tar sands lobby (including the pipeline director for the American Petroleum Institute) a few short weeks ago, the lobby were told to be prepared for lengthy and appropriate government scrutiny over the project.

King told the group that reversing the flow of the Portland-Montreal Pipe Line “is presidential-permit-worthy. And it’s up to the petroleum industry to convince me otherwise.”

Collins, in a prepared statement Tuesday, recalled that the pipeline officials “were not definitive in response to my questions” about exactly what they were up to.

“Should the company decide to seek approval for this new use,” Collins added, “I would expect that appropriate environmental impact reviews would be completed.”

Moose photo by Rick Libbey

Protecting Moose from Dirty Tar Sands

The Exxon & Enbridge pipeline project runs through important moose habitat in New England. If this dangerous project is not stopped, toxic tar sands oil would threaten the waterways where moose live–and would fuel more tar sands operations in Canada that are destroying the boreal forests and polluting fresh water.

Speak up against the risks that the Northeast tar sands pipeline poses to wildlife and our communities>>>

Winter activities like ice fishing are becoming a thing of the past, due to climate change driven by tar sands and other fossil fuels. (Photo: Tom Gill)

But my arrival in Portland, Maine gave me hope. Organizers from across the region had called on citizens to stand up and demand that a likely proposal by oil giants Enbridge and Exxon to use an existing 62 year-old pipeline to bring carbon intensive, dirty tar sands through a pipeline that runs through Canada, and into Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine for export be stopped. Tar sands are a thick, tarry substance mined in Alberta, the most extreme of “extreme oil.”  Mining them requires the vast destruction of pristine boreal forest habitat — the mines and their toxic waste ponds can be seen from space. However, this destruction is not the worst news about tar sands.  It is the climate impacts of tar sands that is so alarming. Tar sands are far more carbon intensive than conventional oil, and the tar sands region contains two times the amount of carbon that has already been emitted by human fossil fuel use, which is why leading climatologists  have warned that tar sands development would hurtle us past any hope for climate stability.

US Congresswoman Chellie Pingree addresses the crowd in Portland

Three days later, concerned citizens and groups in Vermont demanded that the same pipeline proposal be subjected to Vermont law that would give Vermonters the ability to reject this pipeline project.

Tar sands are part of a bigger picture, one that demands action to stem the tide of dirty fuels that are destroying our climate. No one under the age of 28 has lived to see a month where temperatures have been below the 20^th century average.  If we fail to act, crisp winter mornings may soon be a thing of the past in northern New England.  We can do better than that.  And the people of New England are demanding that now is the time to say no to dirty energy and yes to a clean energy future.

Help protect Northeast wildlife and communities from tar sands oil by urging the U.S. State Department to stop the Exxon/Enbridge pipeline!

Imperial and Suncor are among the largest developers of Canadian tar sands oil. This convoluted corporate maze of oil behemoths is in bed with Enbridge, the company behind the Kalamazoo River oil spill, the most costly onshore spill in U.S. history. Now, it apparently wants to pump tar sands oil from Alberta through Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine to the port of Portland for overseas markets. Tar sands oil is a heavy, corrosive, diluted bitumen and is known as one of the dirtiest, most-polluting, hardest-to-clean-up fuels on the planet. The tar sands business is booming in Canada and the corporate hawks are positioning to pounce on the profits they see in this dirty product by using New England communities as conduits to export markets.

It’s no wonder ExxonMobil doesn’t want to come clean. The company’s not clean. It was ExxonMobil that caused the infamous 1989 Valdez spill, a disaster that spewed 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s pristine waters. In July 2011, the company’s Silvertip Pipeline dumped 42,000 gallons of oil into Montana’s Yellowstone River.

840,000 of tar sands crude spilled into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River last year

American lady butterfly taken in Permaquid Point, Maine. Photo by Katherine Davis.

Buggy Photo Tips

How to Photograph Insects — Pro photographer Rob Sheppard shares tips for taking photos of insects, spiders, and other tiny creatures.
 

This Photo of the Day was donated by a participant in the annual National Wildlife Photo Contest. See more photos or sign up for the 42nd Annual National Wildlife Photo Contest.

Cleanup crews are still working to repair the damage caused by Enbridge's 2010 spill in Michigan (photo: Mic Stolz)

Enbridge Inc.—which is known for its terrible safety record and is responsible for a massive tar sands spill in the Kalamazoo River in 2010—has asked the National Energy Board in Canada to allow for a partial reversal of its pipeline between Ontario and Montreal to allow oil in that pipeline to flow east. If this reversal is approved, it is highly likely Big Oil will soon seek to move tar sands through a pipeline that now flows west from Portland, ME to Montreal by reversing the flow of that pipeline as well.

Such a reversal, if approved, would open the way for this dangerous fuel, which is much more corrosive, acidic, and harder to clean up in the event of spill than conventional oil, to flow through Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.  The pipeline (called the “Portland to Montreal Pipeline” or PMPL) currently cuts through or borders some of New England’s most important waters, including Sebago Lake, the Connecticut River, and tributaries to Lake Champlain. While its safety record isn’t as abysmal as other companies’, the PMPL has suffered major spills, including one that fouled Lake Memphremagog, and is already much older than the projected lifespan of proposed new tar sands pipelines.

The Portland-Montreal Pipeline cuts through New England on its route to the coast.

But even as we take strides toward reducing global warming pollution, climatologists warn that tar sands are a carbon bomb in the process of being ignited. Because it takes so much energy to produce and refine, fueling cars with tar sands gasoline has about 20 percent more carbon emissions than fueling cars with gasoline from conventional oil. This means the use of tar sands will undermine any efforts in the Northeast to reduce carbon emissions from our transportation sector. Climate change threatens to make Vermont maple syrup and Maine lobsters things of the past. We need to turn to carbon-free sources of fuel now, not move in the opposite direction.

Sebago Lake -- one of Maine's biggest sources of drinking water -- would be put at risk by a tar sands pipeline (photo: Peter Hopper)

Tell Canada’s National Energy Board to stop the Trailbreaker pipeline proposal!

To hear NWF’s Jim Murphy talk about tar sands’ threat to Northeastern states, click here.

Read more about our work to fight back against Big Oil’s tar sands scheme at nwf.org/tarsands.

Enjoying a rare quiet moment in the Augusta Civic Center

We gave out a couple thousand Ranger Rick, Animal Baby, and Big Backyard magazines as well as copies of our On Thin Ice report, which is about how warm winters are impacting sporting traditions. We even had a Maine-specific NWF fact sheet about warm winter impacts, written by Eric Orff, a Game and Fish Commission member and retired wildlife biologist.