While not directly about Line 6B matters, we’ve encountered a number of tangentially-related material the past couple of days deserving of your attention, not least of which are some follow-ups to the awful spill in Arkansas, a terrible, vivid reminder of why all of us should be deeply concerned and continue to speak up and help foster public discussion of pipeline safety.

Some of our favorite journalists are on the case. Over at her “Riding the Pipelines” blog, Elana Schor provides some interesting— and disturbingly familiar to those who have read the NTSB report on Marshall–background on Exxon’s safety record with regard to the Pegasus line that just burst.

And Lisa Song, who has evidently been extraordinarily busy the past few days, has a terrific article at Inside Climate News linking the Arkansas spill to the recent petition to the EPA and PHMSA filed by the National Wildlife Federation and others for stricter regulations of tar sands oil transport. What caught our eye in particular was this:

The section of the pipeline involved in Friday’s spill in Arkansas was originally built in the 1940s, according to an Exxon spokesperson. The full length of the pipline was used to transport crude oil from Nederland, Texas north to Patoka, Illinois. After lying mostly idle for four years, the pipeline’s flow was reversed in 2006 to carry Canadian dilbit to Gulf Coast refineries. Exxon said the reversal was an industry first, and that it required 240,000 man-hours of work to accomplish.

That’s right: Exxon reactivated a 66 year-old, 20-inch pipe so that they could pump diluted bitumen through it, which must be sort of like sucking peanut butter through a paper straw. And of course, considering that there’s a soon-to-be-idle line in our backyard right now, these examples of pipeline reactivation make us very, very nervous.

Closer to Michigan, the Detroit Free Press has just run two very interesting articles: one about the state of gas pipelines in Michigan and the costs (and difficulties) in repairing them and the second about the dreadful regulatory situation regarding those same lines. The Freep had the good sense to call up our friends at the Pipeline Safety Trust. In the first article, Executive Director Carl Weimer points out the primary difficulty when it comes to repairing these lines (and ensuring public safety!): “What it comes down to in most every state we’ve looked into is, who is going to pay for that replacement?” he said. “It often gets passed along to ratepayers, and public service commissions hate to do that because they catch a lot of grief.” And speaking of the public service commission (which certainly wouldn’t want to catch any grief!) in the second article, the PS Trust’s Rebecca Craven (another of our heroes) notes that the commission’s general haplessness (that’s our characterization, not Rebecca’s) is compounded by the same woeful lack of staffing and resources that plagues PHMSA and agencies in other states:

“They [PHMSA] simply don’t have the number of inspectors they need to adequately oversee the amount of pipeline in the system, and states are in the same boat,” said Rebecca Craven, program director of the Bellingham, Wash.-based Pipeline Safety Trust, a nonprofit organization that advocates for improved energy transportation safety.

Up in Canada, there’s a great article in the Tyee about pipeline safety and landowner advocate Dave Core, who is the founder of the  Canadian Association of Energy and Pipeline Landowner Associations (and yet another of our heroes!). Dave recently gave a presentation to a Canadian senate committee. What he had to say will surely resonate with most readers of this blog. Here’s a little taste:

“My goal this morning is to bring perspective to the issues of landowners when confronted by pipeline companies. That is, the issues when private property owners, like yourselves, come up against government supported and subsidized corporations that are allowed to come packing with government regulations to take our lands, our rights and leave us with annual risks, liabilities, a duty of care that we do not want, costs and the pipeline junk which includes the resulting safety and liability issues of historical contamination and pipeline collapse when the companies pack up and leave.

“Before I proceed I would like you to pretend you are sitting around a kitchen table with your family and a ‘land agent’ has just left you with a brown envelope with a Section 87 Notice, an NEB Regulatory Notice, stating that a pipeline company is going to put a pipeline in your backyard and the easement agreement and the compensation offer are included.

“The stress has only just begun. Next come teams of land agents, the men trained in profiling and in telling every tale they can to get the deal signed while they sit at your kitchen table drinking your coffee. He/she might even be your neighbour’s son or daughter. It is like you have stepped into a spaghetti western with cowboys coming to your door, not packing a gun, but a big smile, lots of lies and packing government regulations that allow them to threaten you if you question them.”

The rest of the article, aptly titled “Pipeline Company Bullies,” is well worth reading.

Also from Canada comes this interesting op-ed in the New York Times, providing a counterpoint to tar sands development boosterism.

And finally, one closer to home. The Livingston Daily Press & Argus ran an article a couple of weeks ago that slipped past our radar (thanks for sending it, Beth Duman!). It’s about the dissatisfaction of some landowners– those good people the Nashes and the Watsons– as construction nears completion. The bad news, however, is that even though the construction phase is coming to a close, a whole new round of likely headaches and difficulties is on the horizon: the restoration phase. You can bet we’ll be on the case.