20-year-old Isabel Brooks and two of her friends locked themselves inside a segment of the Keystone XL pipeline -- a controversial pipeline being built to carry toxic tar sands oil to the US coast for export -- to protest its construction. While inside the pipe, they discovered something shocking: there are actually holes in the Keystone XL pipeline, created by faulty welding.
But moments after snapping a photo of the light coming into the supposedly airtight pipe, Isabel was arrested and held for 24 days in prison. An hour after her arrest, TransCanada laid that segment of pipeline in the ground without inspecting it.
Sign our urgent petition to TransCanada to get independent inspection for every single inch of the Keystone XL pipeline to identify and fix any holes in the pipe.
Despite federal regulations making independent inspection mandatory, TransCanada pipeline contractors hire their own pipeline inspectors. Without truly independent oversight, TransCanada can cut corners, and rubber stamp inspections. And when TransCanada cuts corners, communities, farmland, water, health and the planet suffer.
What’s really scary is that if Isabel found one segment of faulty pipeline, it’s likely there are others.
TransCanada has a legacy of pipeline spills. In the Keystone pipeline’s first year of operation, it spilled 12 times. This is a huge moment to show just how dangerous the KXL pipeline really is. With each day that passes, TransCanada is moving ahead with the construction of this pipeline, potentially burying more uninspected pipe, and putting more communities at risk.
If we speak out now we can make sure that TransCanada’s legacy of spills is stopped before it’s too late.
Sign our urgent petition to TransCanada now demanding independent pipeline inspection.
Thanks for being one of us,
Emma, Angus, Kaytee and the rest of us
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Further Reading:
Photos of KXL's life-threatening weld confirm pipeline opponents' fears, Tar Sands Blockade, Feb. 12, 2013
Is TransCanada Laying Defective Keystone XL Pipe in Texas? DeSmogBlog, Feb. 6th 2013
Keystone Pipeline Infographic: ‘Built to Spill’. Huffington Post, Aug. 29th, 2011