Weekly News Roundup – May 4, 2012

Aislinn Maestas | Last Updated: January 8, 2016

Want to know what National Wildlife Federation was up to this week? Here is a recap of the week’s NWF news:

New Route, Same Risks: Keystone XL Fails to Protect Nebraska

May 4 – TransCanada reapplied for a Presidential Permit to construct the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline today. The pipeline would carry up to 900,000 barrels a day of Alberta tar sands oil 1,700 miles to refineries on the Gulf Coast.

Jeremy Symons, senior vice president of the National Wildlife Federation, said today:

“It’s hard to tell what’s really new about TransCanada’s application, which continues to threaten Nebraska’s iconic Sandhills and its critical Ogallala aquifer. It’s just the latest broken promise from TransCanada, which has threatened to seize Nebraskan lands by eminent domain and claimed its Keystone I pipeline would spill very rarely, then spilled 12 times in its first year of operation.”

BLM fracking rules a good start, but provisions in draft need to be strengthened

May 4 – Proposed federal rules for hydraulic fracturing, including the handling of wastewater and the integrity of well casings, are a step forward in safeguarding public lands, but requirements for publicly disclosing the contents of fracking fluids need to be strengthened, a sportsmen’s coalition said Friday.

The BLM’s draft rule on fracking is a start to addressing concerns about the potential impacts of drilling and handling drilling fluids on the lands that are key to the West’s water supplies, fish and wildlife, said Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development.

Campus Conservation Nationals 2012 Schools Lauded for Leadership in Reducing Consumption

May 2 – NWF’s Campus Ecology Program, Lucid, U.S. Green Buildings Council (USGBC) and Alliance to Save Energy have announced the winners of Campus Conservation Nationals (CCN) 2012, a nationwide electricity and water use reduction competition among colleges and universities. It is the first nationwide electricity and water reduction competition on college campuses.

Between February 6 and April 23, 2012, students across the country competed to achieve the greatest reductions in their residence halls’ electricity consumption over a three-week period of their choosing. In all, nearly 250,000 students in 1,300 residences at 100 colleges and universities entered, saving more than 1.7 million kilowatt-hours of energy–equivalent to more than 2.6 million pounds of CO2 and over $150,000 in energy savings, equal to removing 151 US homes from the grid for a year.

Laws Don’t Adequately Protect Great Lakes from Pipeline Oil Spills, New Report Finds

April 30 – Nearly two years after one of the worst oil spills in Midwest history, a new legal analysis by the National Wildlife Federation reveals that laws governing oil pipelines do not adequately protect the Great Lakes and its communities from oil pollution—and that states have not passed their own laws to fill in the gaps.

“Current laws leave the door open to future oil spills,” said Sara Gosman, water resources attorney for the National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes office and lecturer at the University of Michigan Law School. “Contrary to common perception, oil spills are an ongoing problem in the region. Federal and state laws should do more to prevent spills and protect our communities, economy and wildlife.”

And here are highlights from NWF in the News: