Canadian Author Gets a Look at Expanding Canadian Mess: Tar Sands in Indiana and Illinois
Posted May 4, 2009 in Solving Global Warming
Last week I had the opportunity to take a road trip to northwest Indiana. Riding shotgun was Canadian journalist and author, Andrew Nikiforuk, whose book Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent is selling like hotcakes in his native country.
While he has probably seen far worse in Canada, I assumed Nikiforuk was taken aback by what he saw as we whizzed towards Gary, IN. It is a truly wondrous panorama of pollution: coal plants, refineries, steel mills, factories. They all huddle together on the southern curve of Lake Michigan in a patchwork of large-scale industrial sites.
Not long after crossing the Indiana state line we could see the unmistakable riot of pipes, machinery, and burning flares that is BP's Whiting refinery, the largest tar sands facility in the US. The smell of gasoline quickly followed. Not far down the highway we reached our destination, a refurbished bath house called the Aquatorium. Though the area beaches are still a dead ringer for Cape Cod, bath houses like the Aquatorium are remnants of a different time when northwest Indiana's beaches were a vacation Mecca, drawing tourists from around the Midwest to sunbathe and enjoy the unique living sand dunes that dot the coast. The view from the Aquatorium's beach is still gorgeous, but the hulking steel mills that loom darkly on both sides make clear the current industrial dominance in the region (see photo above). And it is a reminder that the environmental mess in the area cannot be blamed on any one facility.
But certainly one facility has drawn the ire of the public and national politicians in recent years. The drumbeat of concern over plans for increased pollution from BP has been impossible to ignore.
And that is why dozens waited for Nikiforuk in Gary, where people were eager to learn more about the source that would fuel these emissions. He described how the bitumen is mined from the tar sands in his home province of Alberta. The impact on the landscape. The scale of destruction to the forest, waterways, and air throughout the region. And the toll this has all taken on some of the nearby communities. He discussed the upgraders---facilities that take the raw tarry bitumen, separate if from the sand, and blends the mined goo with cleaner oil to make it viscous enough to pass through a pipeline. His audience stared in rapt attention, often shaking their heads with looks of concern. (Listen to this Chicago Public Radio interview to hear more in Nikiforuk's own words.)
This is because they know that the heavy metals, air pollutants, and neurotoxins that are part and parcel with bitumen is already in their community.
And more is coming.
The BP Whiting Refinery is expanding to process more of the stuff. If you read Switchboard, you know that NRDC is working with local groups to force the refinery to implement the most up-to-date environmental controls to protect the health and welfare of the folks who were sitting in that room. They all knew about the issue, but they did not know the scale. And I think they walked away with a far better understanding of what was going on around them.
Sadly, it will take longer for the rest of us to catch on. And, unfortunately, the tar sands fight is not limited to Canadians and people who live near Whiting, IN.
That's the most important part of Nikiforuk's message.
Without any public discussion or input, our energy sector is being fundamentally changed to make this stuff ubiquitous. $50 billion is being spent to expand the tar sands refining infrastructure in the United States right now. That money is being used to shift our nation's oil addiction to an even more dangerous fuel. Bitumen is not even oil---it was a long time ago, but it has since been degraded by bacteria into something far worse; a fuel source with enormously increased CO2 emissions (up to 3X those of typical petroleum products) and loads of dangerous toxins.
Without any public discussion or input, these billions of dollars will tie us to this fuel source for decades.
Without any public discussion or input we are digging our climate change hole deeper and deeper.
Think I am over-reacting? Check the coverage of a tar sands pipeline that will be running near my home town of Springfield, IL. Canada's governmental representatives in the Midwest---staff from their consulate in Chicago---had blown into town to promote the country's energy cash cow with an innocuous message: It's just a little more oil...nothing to see here. But when I talked to the writer, he admitted wondering what "oil sands" were in the first place.
As the refinery expansions and pipeline projects allow bitumen to creep further and further out, they take a little bit of pollution from northwest Indiana...and Alberta...with them.
And I assume that scares Andrew Nikiforuk way more than the drive to Gary...
