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TAR SANDS at OUR DOORSTEP: the Threat to the Lake Champlain Region’S Waters, Wildlife and Climate ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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TAR SANDS at OUR DOORSTEP: the Threat to the Lake Champlain Region’S Waters, Wildlife and Climate ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TAR SANDS AT OUR DOORSTEP: The Threat to the Lake Champlain Region’s Waters, Wildlife and Climate ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AUTHORS The National Wildlife Federation wishes to Jim Murphy, National Wildlife Federation thank the following institutions and donors [email protected] whose generosity supports our efforts to Sheridan Brown, National Wildlife Federation keep tar sands out of the Northeast: REVIEWERS/EDITORS CORPORATE AND FOUNDATION Catherine Bowes, National Wildlife Federation SUPPORTERS Johanna Miller, Vermont Natural Resources Council Canaday Family Charitable Trust Conor Bambrick, Environmental Advocates of New York David Blittersdorf Family Foundation Curtis Fisher, National Wildlife Federation Growald Family Fund Jenny Rowland, National Wildlife Federation Lintilhac Foundation Libby Johnson, National Wildlife Federation New Venture Fund Vermont Community Foundation’s Acorn Fund COVER PHOTOS Vermont Creamery top background: Flickr: found_drama bottom from left: Gary Lackie, Eric Kilby, Matt Jeppson/ INDIVIDUAL DONORS Shutterstock.com, USFWS Northeast Region Marcia Angermann Ingrid Barry This Report is available online at www.nwf.org/atourdoorstep Al Boright and Sandy Shenk Boright Edmund Coffin Ben Cohen Jito Coleman and Bonnie Atwater Mark Curran and Margie Straub Judy DiMario Ann Dion Matthew Dunne and Sarah Taylor Barbarina and Aaron Heyerdahl Curtis and Sue Hooper Jonathan Larsen and Mary Peacock Sally and Robert Linder David and Lucy Marvin Sarah Muyskens and Michael Green Hubert O’Brien Kinny Perot and Richard Czaplinski William and Lynette Raap Lili Ruane and Win Smith Mark and Sukey Schroeder Leigh Seddon and Ann Aspell Elizabeth Skarie and Jerry Greenfield Lisa Steele and Scott Hammond Rep. Kate and Marshall Webb © 2015 National Wildlife Federation EXECUTIVE SUMMARY DONLAND/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM major battle is unfolding across New England, New York and beyond. The fight is whether our region, with a long Ahistory of successfully reducing pollution, protecting wildlife, improving public health and growing our economy with clean energy technologies, will become a large user and major transportation corridor of one of the dirtiest fossil fuels on earth –— tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada. The outcome of this fight will have dramatic implications on wildlife and communities, from potential toxic oil spills in our lakes and rivers to substantial increases in greenhouse gas pollution fueling climate change. J+KHOLLINGSWORTH “Tar Sands at Our Doorstep” documents the tar sands oil industry’s three pronged attack to infiltrate the region with dirty, dangerous tar sands oil. The report highlights the impacts on one of the region’s most important natural resources, Lake Champlain, an international treasure often referred as the sixth Great Lake, and other critical habitats across the State of Vermont. The oil industry is making moves to bring tar sands to the Northeast in three ways: 1. The Exxon-owned Portland Pipe Line Corporation has conducted a multi-year, well-funded lobbying and media effort to utilize its 64 year old pipeline that cuts through Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine to transport dirty tar sands oil. This pipeline currently transports conventional oil from Portland, Maine to Montreal. NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION 1 THE CRUDE OIL RAIL LINE AND TAR SANDS PIPELINES Crude Oil Rail Line 1 Tar Sands Pipelines 1 Missisquoi River 2 2 Willoughby State Forest 3 3 Connecticut River 5 4 4 Victory Bog 5 Lake Champlain 2. Each week tens of millions of gallons of explosive crude oil roll along the western banks of Lake Champlain in thinly lined tank cars —– described by many “as Pepsi cans on wheels.” This is part of an unprecedented increase in oil-by-rail transport —– of almost 40 fold —– that has taken place over the past decade. This increase has occurred with little oversight, and the result has been an increasing number of spills and explosions, the most tragic of which destroyed the scenic town of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec and killed 47 people. To add to this dangerous oil-by-rail onslaught in the region, an off-loading facility in Albany, New York, where all this oil is transported, has filed a permit application to be able to load dirtier tar sands oil onto barges. This would enable the heavy oil to be shipped to refineries in the Mid-Atlantic region and elsewhere that can process the thick, dirty tar sands oil. 3. With an increasing amount of tar sands oil reaching refineries in New Brunswick, Canada and the Gulf Coast, Suncor Energy Exxon more and more of this extremely carbon pollution intensive gasoline is ending up in the tanks of our cars —– gasoline that is up to 37% more polluting than regular gasoline on a well-to-wheel basis. This is a matter of significant concern because, up until recently, the region’s gasoline was virtually tar sands oil free and the Northeast is a substantial market that the tar sands oil industry wants to penetrate. Without action to keep tar sands oil derived fuel out of the region, the dirty fuel could be the source of up to 18% of the area’s transportation fuel source by 2020. Exxon controls ownership of the Portland- 2 NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION Montreal Pipe Line. With avenues like Keystone XL stalled and likely to be denied, the industry is getting desperate to move its carbon polluting, land-locked tar sands oil to markets —– particularly abroad —– and make good on plans to greatly expand tar sands oil production in the coming years. This report, for the first time in one place, shows the Exxon-owned Portland Pipe Line Corporation’s true intentions to transport tar sands oil through the region, despite their public relations to the contrary: u The tar sands industry spent approximately $750,000 to oppose and launch a misinformation campaign against a South Portland, Maine ballot initiative to protect the health of its citizens and character of its waterfront. The ballot initiative narrowly failed by less than two hundred votes. u In a December, 2013 letter, the American Petroleum Institute then threatened the city with a lawsuit if the City Council passed a similar measure to protect the health and character of the city. The city council did not back down and passed the popular measure by a 6 to 1 vote. u The Exxon-owned company made good on its threat to the City, filing suit to overturn the will of the South Portland residents and making its intent clear, stating in the suit that: “[the company’s] pipelines are currently underutilized due to market conditions that favor the transportation of oil south from Canada to the United States and other international markets,” and that South Portland’s ordinance “adversely affects PPLC’s ability to respond to market conditions.” u The industry has admitted to its openness to transporting tar sands oil in testimony before the Vermont legislature. u The tar sands oil industry has received approval for its plans to transport tar sands from Alberta to Montreal. Tar sands oil is literally at our region’s doorstep. These actions demonstrate industry’s intent to move tar sands oil any way it can through Northern New England and New York so as to access markets and East Coast refineries, putting the sensitive habitat areas in the Lake Champlain region and Vermont in the crosshairs. The Exxon-owned pipeline consists of two parallel, 236-mile pipelines that link Suncor Energy’s Montreal refinery with a crude oil terminal near the tanker port at South Portland, Maine.1 The Exxon-owned pipeline’s 18-inch diameter pipe (installed in 1950) has a capacity of 192,000 barrels per day (bpd), and its 24-inch diameter pipe (installed in 1965) has a capacity of 410,000 bpd. The original 12-inch pipeline (installed in 1941) has been taken off-line.2 ERIC ORFF NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION 3 FLICKR: JUANALBERTO10 The risks to the region are real and present. “Tar Sands at Our Doorstep” highlights the lessons learned from the horrible pipeline spills in the Kalamazoo River in Michigan and in Mayflower, Arkansas. These spills undeniably prove that tar sands oil is toxic and almost impossible to clean up when it spills. Five years after the Kalamazoo River spill, where about a million gallons of tar sands oil polluted a forty mile stretch of the river, oil still churns up despite over a billion dollars of cleanup efforts and multiple dredging attempts. The tar sands oil spill in Arkansas resulted in the permanent displacement of over 20 families. The parallels between the Arkansas disaster and the pipeline in New England are stark. Both pipelines are Exxon-owned. Both pipelines are over sixty years old and were designed for conventional oil, not tar sands. Exxon-owned Portland Pipe Line Corporation has already testified that its pipeline’s useful life is 60 years —– an age the 64 year-old line has already passed. Adding alarm to the prospect of a pipeline reversal, the federal regulatory agency in charge of pipeline safety recently concluded that reversing a pipeline can impact the pipeline’s integrity. Further, the report documents that the region is not prepared for a significant spill. Federal safety regulations for both pipeline and rail transport of oil have proven to be lacking and out-of-date. 4 NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION Indeed, a major report by the National Transportation Safety Board following the Kalamazoo spill pointed to inadequate regulations as a factor leading to the disaster. A major spill into a remote river of northern Vermont or Lake Champlain would stretch the capacity of local responders, and many needed responders to a major disaster are, according to the pipeline company itself, located in Maine and Virginia. Finally, the report makes critical recommendations to ensure that the region’s residents and policy makers are alerted to the serious risks posed by dirty tar sands oil.
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