Greg Awtry

Most of you have played poker at one time or another.

You risk treasure in hopes of benefiting by holding the winning hand. That’s what is happening between TransCanada and Nebraskans. They want us to risk our most valuable treasures, land and water, while all the time they hold the winning hand that will benefit them by the billions.
C – Cornerstone Bank

Finally the table stakes have risen too high, as more Nebraskans are unwilling to gamble on a foreign company’s word that a 36-inch pipe full of poison chemicals will have no impact on our land and water, forever.

And to make things worse, the people of Nebraska are playing with a short deck. All the Jacks, Queens and Kings (Federal Representatives, Senators and the Governor) have gone to the TransCanada side of the table. Nebraskans have tried to go to the draw but have pulled a pair of real losers in Adrian Smith and Lee Terry.

Adrian thinks pumping toxic oil through his district is fine. He also doesn’t want to put the eight cents per barrel tax on Canadian oil right now, even though American oil has to pay the tax to replenish the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which could be tapped in case of a large spill. He has yet come up with a logical explanation for that one.

Lee Terry, knowing the final public hearing would be in Nebraska, bulldozed ahead with his short-sighted legislation to bypass the State Department, nullifying our voices and obviously not giving a damn about what Nebraskans would say at the public hearing. How disgusting is that?

It is time to stop being politically correct with these two. In regards to the Keystone XL, Adrian Smith has been about effective as a plunger in an outhouse, while Lee Terry needs to run off and join the circus where his talent as a clown will get the respect he can’t get from folks who desperately want to protect our land and water.

And while we are at it, Governor Heineman and Senator Mike Johanns were the two who wrote Obama and Clinton expressing their deep concerns over the pipe’s original route through the aquifer, only to completely flip-flop when TransCanada did its so called “re-route” where it now plans to go over even more miles of the Ogallala Aquifer!

If they used their heads on this critical issue, one could only assume it was so their mouths could make noise, their brains could hold their hair up, while their ears were of no use at all, as they too made up their minds before the final public hearing in Grand Island.

Oh, then we have Sen. Deb Fischer, a self proclaimed land and water lover. She told the Lincoln Journal Star last week that the Obama administration should “move ahead” with the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

In the same interview she said, Obama should “review comments made at the final hearing.” Which is it Deb, move ahead, or listen to the people? The Third District put her in office and now she wants a foreign corporation to slice us open like a butchered hog, place a poison tube right through our middle, sew us back up and tell us to go home and we’ll be OK? Deb needs to take a trip to Kalamazoo, Mich., and Mayflower, Ark., then get back to us.

Let’s get serious. The nation’s final KXL environmental hearing was held at the same venue as the Nebraska State Fair. Had this been an actual state fair, this current crop of elected officials would have been thicker than flies over at the bovine barn. But their minds were made up and nothing their constituents would say, nor over 800,000 comments submitted to the State Department, means anything to them. That says a lot about their view of democracy, doesn’t it?

Their absence was a glaring embarrassment on a day when the nation came to Nebraska to listen to the people, and our state leaders didn’t want to hear a word.

Now that the environmental phase is closing, the final phase in the review process begins. That is to determine whether the Keystone XL is in the “national interest” of the United States of America.

Eight different federal agencies will weigh in, along with a comment period for the citizens. But once again, Nebraska’s Washington contingency will lend deaf ears to the debate because they have already made up their minds.

Over the coming weeks we’ll be addressing why a foreign company, TransCanada, whose only interest is to ship foreign oil to the coast of Texas where it will be refined and much of it loaded on ships destined to foreign markets, is neither in the best interest of the U.S. nor the state of Nebraska. It would be nice if we could have that conversation with open-minded Nebraska politicians, but they have played their cards and left the parlor.

In Kenny Rogers’ famous ballad he sings, “You got to know when to hold’em, know when to fold’em, know when to walk away, know when to run …” Last week’s public hearing clearly shows Nebraskans are no where close to walking away from this issue, showing TransCanada we’ll be staying strong until “the dealin’s done!”

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In 10 days the entire international oil industry will be focused on a small rural town in Nebraska.

Or will it?

On April 18, 2013, the U.S. State Department will hold the nation’s final Keystone XL public hearing in Grand Island, Nebraska.

In conjunction with the hearing, the public has been submitting electronic comments to the State Department for weeks, but there is one small catch. The State Department won’t make these “public” comments public!

It seems the State Department contracted with a company to handle all these comments, a company called Environmental Resources Management (ERM), ironically the same company TransCanada hired to help them with their environmental study.

ERM will then roll all these comments up in a nice tidy package to be used by President Obama and John Kerry when they finally make the decision on the Keystone XL.

Now we find out the public comments will not be made public unless a Freedom of Information request is filed with the State Department, and the chance of receiving any information before the pipeline decision will most likely be too late! This smells worse than toxic odors in the Mayflower, Ark., tar-sand spill!

You might ask why Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry must decide. Two reasons: (1) the pipeline crosses an international border and (2) Obama and Kerry must determine if the foreign company’s (TransCanada) request to make billions by slicing open our nation’s heartland is in our “national interest.”

Listen folks, this pipeline is clearly not in the United States’ national interest. First of all it is a publicly held foreign company simply trying to make money for its stockholders.

Second of all it would be constructed to do one thing and one thing only: to pipe foreign oil to Texas refineries so it can be sold on the world market which is about 25 percent higher than the price tar-sand oil is selling for in Canada.

In other words the price of this oil will go up once it reaches our southern coast. Yet there are people, including Nebraska’s own Third District Congressman Adrian Smith, who tell us it may lower the price of fuel. What economics class did he take!

Will the Keystone XL create jobs? Sure it will, temporary ones, and nowhere close to the over-exaggerated claims made by TransCanada, politicians and the national media.

When the dust settles on the construction of this pending disaster, real numbers say it will create 35 permanent jobs in America, 13 of them in Nebraska according to the this state’s own DEQ report. By contrast a typical super Wal-Mart will employ nearly 200 people. Now you tell me is the Keystone XL is in our national interest?

Some folks say because Canada is one of our largest trading partners, denying the pipe will make them mad. Hey, Canada doesn’t own that oil, oil companies do, and don’t for a minute think all those oil companies are in Canada and the U.S. China has already invested billions of dollars into the Canadian tar sands, as has Korea, Thailand, France, England and the Netherlands.

That’s who owns the oil that will be pumping through Nebraska’s Sandhills and the Ogallala aquifer! National interest? Certainly, but whose? Not ours, that is for certain!

So, let’s talk about safety. TransCanada would have us believe this pipe, nine times larger than the pipeline that spilled in Arkansas, will be safe. But Scientific American reported just last week that “pipelines in the upper Midwest that routinely carry oil from tar sands have spilled 3.6 times more oil per pipeline mile than the U.S. average.”

The facts are that pipeline companies are having a very difficult time keeping this highly pressurized DilBit oil inside the pipes, evident by major spills in the Yellowstone River, the ongoing disaster in the Kalamazoo River and now the Mayflower, Ark., spill, along with dozens of other smaller spills.

TransCanada talks about how it can detect leaks and shut down the pipeline. But in many cases the public finds the spills first.

In Michigan, the Enbridge control booth operators misread the readings for 17 hours, and never did detect the nearly 1,000,000 gallons of tar-sand oil that was gushing into Talmadge Creek, and ultimately into the Kalamazoo River. The public found the spill. Just imagine if that were to occur in the remote and sparsely populated Sandhills.

The bottom line is that big oil money, and millions of TransCanada dollars, have bought public opinion. We know big oil is a major contributor to political campaigns, and one could make the case that it has worked considering Nebraska’s entire Washington contingency and governor are in favor of the pipe.

Well, thank goodness for the people of Nebraska. Hundreds of courageous landowners and concerned citizens in our state have done nearly everything in their power to counter big money with common sense. Their love of the land is born from a pioneering spirit that is alive and well.

They have proven Nebraskans can make up our own minds, and they have shown our opinions are not for sale at any price! Had it not been for these brave stewards of the land, the Keystone XL may have already been buried in our soil, just ½ inch away from our water supplies.

Now these dedicated people, who have sorted through all the corporate and political spin to expose the real truths of this pipeline, and who are trying to save our most valuable resources from being decimated by a foreign company, deserve your support.

They will line up by the hundreds to testify. Their comments won’t be hidden from public view because the York News-Times will be there in your behalf, when they gather a week from Thursday in the small Midwestern town of Grand Island, Nebraska to fight for all of us.

Publisher’s note: Let this editorial serve as an invitation to York’s mayor, the entire city council, York county commissions, Speaker of the state legislature, state senators, Nebraska’s federal congressmen and senators and our governor to attend this final opportunity to hear from the people who put them in office. There could be nothing on their respective pubic calendars more important than this project which will have a lasting and potentially dangerous effect Nebraskans. Let’s see if they can show the courage of their constituents and be in Grand Island on April 18, to hear the people of this great state.

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As I write this editorial column on Sunday, December 30, 2012, to be published on Wednesday, January 2, 2013, I have no way of knowing if you will ever read it.

As publisher, it is my job to lead this newspaper through the often times opposing views of journalism and capitalism. To do this we have to approve an annual budget, establish subscription and advertising rates, ensure all the logistics of printing and distribution are in place, and adhere to all the government’s regulations. On top of this we are expected to produce an excellent product five days a week and do so at a profit.

We should have done all this work in the latter half of 2012, but we were too busy trying to cover the election and fighting the pipeline route, so we “kicked the can” down the road until after the election. Then we spent the next seven weeks arguing amongst ourselves about the entire process. Then, we decided since it was the Holidays we would just wait until the last day of the year to do all this, so we could spend more time at home.

So today (I mentioned this was written on Sunday, December 30, 2012) I called our management team together to see if we could actually produce newspapers in 2013 and avoid the fiscal cliff we made for ourselves by not doing our jobs as our readers expected us to do in 2012.

Around the table we have Kathy Larson, our Advertising Director, Steve Moseley and Melanie Wilkinson our Managing Editor and News Editor respectively. There is Bryan Emick our Circulation/Distribution Director, Valerie Nunnenkamp who leads our Creative Department, and Eric Eckert, our Online Director. All of these individuals are instrumental in leading their departments and represent important elements to all of our readers.

I open the meeting by telling those present at the table, we need more revenue, and just like President Obama’s budget, which calls for a 64.2 percent increase in personal income tax rates over the next five years, I ask the team to raise rates by 62 percent, but that we should consider only raising subscription and advertising rates on the richest readers and largest advertisers.

Kathy Larson in sales immediately says that is not fair and balanced. Bryan Emick in circulation says we don’t know how much money our readers make so we would have to ask everyone for their tax returns to see if they should pay more.

Eric Eckert, our digital expert and Valerie Nunnenkamp suggest we cut out expenses instead. Eckert says let’s stop printing the paper and make everyone read the paper online. Nunnenkamp says let’s drop all color ads so we don’t have to print the paper in color.

Moseley and Wilkinson in our news department want us to expand the paper so we can print more news stories and more photographs.

Larson says if we raise ad rates by sixty percent that nobody will buy the ads and we will actually bring in less revenue. Emick says if we raise subscription rates by sixty percent people will cancel their subscriptions and a hundred newspaper carriers will lose their jobs.

I just want to play golf and take the family to Hawaii, and if we can’t get this done, we’ll fall over the fiscal cliff and possibly won’t be able to produce newspapers our readers deserve!

Of course none of this really happened. But if we actually ran our newspaper like Washington is running our country, I guarantee we would have readers more outraged than they are with the way our federal government is taking care of the peoples’ business right now.

We would have hundreds of York News-Times readers writing us letters to the editor and calling to cancel subscriptions. Our advertisers would be outraged and threaten to cancel advertising contracts. Our contracted carriers who are up in the middle of the night trudging through snowdrifts would picket our office in fear of losing their jobs.

Yet most of us sit idly by watching Washington mismanage our country to the point it jeopardizes our future, while placing a near insurmountable burden on our children. Where is the outrage?

Have we all given up on the notion that our country was founded on principles that the people would rule through representatives? Are you happy with the way they are doing the job we hired them to do? Have you contacted them and told them about your feelings?

All of us here at this newspaper try desperately each and every day to put out a paper that is representative of our community. We are not perfect and don’t claim to be, and when we mess up, you let us know, and you should! When our nation is in peril and your congressman, senator or president mess up, do you let them know? You should!

My resolution in 2013 is to watch our Washington, Lincoln, and York representatives like a hawk. You deserve that from your newspaper. Your job, if you choose to accept it, is to help us. Help us build by letting us publish your opinions on how well (or not so well) our elected officials (your employees) are doing.

Here, at the News-Times, Larson, Moseley, Wilkinson, Emick, Nunnenkamp and Eckert did their jobs in 2012 so we could keep our business running efficiently and profitably in 2013.

If Obama, Reid, Boehner, McConnell or Pelosi, were to apply for work at the News-Times, they would be turned down, not qualified based on poor job performance.

Sitting around the Whitehouse on the last day of the year trying to figure out how pay for a government we can no longer afford is no way to run a country, which is why we could never hire any of these national leaders. They don’t deserve to sit around a negotiating table with people of real integrity like we have here at the York News-Times.

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Open letter to: Nebraska Governor Heineman and Nebraska’s Washington delegation Representatives Smith, Fortenberry and Terry, Senators Nelson and Johanns, Senate candidates Fischer and Kerrey, House candidate John Ewing and Speaker Flood,

All of you are aware of the controversy surrounding TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline. I personally want to thank Governor Heinemann for calling a special session of the Nebraska Unicameral to look into the matter of routing this pipeline through our state.

I would also remind him that his August 2011 letter to President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton said, “…I believe that the pipeline should not cross a substantial portion of the Ogallala Aquifer.” He goes on to mention the aquifer five times in his brief letter, ending by saying “Do not allow TransCanada to build a pipeline over the Ogallala Aquifer and risk the potential damage to Nebraska’s water.” Governor, where do you stand now in regards to the pipe crossing the Aquifer?

Representative Adrian Smith, you have been completely AWOL on the subject, responding identically when asked on two separate occasions by the York News-Times what your position was regarding this pipeline. You said you would trust the science. Well, Congressman Smith, the science is falling short and the facts are these high pressure tar sand pipelines are leaking all over the place, the most notable being the million gallon spill into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, others along Keystone 1, another in Wisconsin, and even more tar sand pipelines spills in Canada.

Representative Terry, do you even have a clue to the position your own House of Representatives and the Internal Revenue Service took on tar sand? Terry wrote a letter on May 8th this year to key members in the Senate and the House urging, “the Keystone XL pipeline be built quickly and properly through the transportation bill.” In his letter he indicated the pipe would transport oil, petroleum products and Canadian crude. According to an IRS Technical Advice Memorandum a year earlier, the House Ways and Means Committee ruled that tar sand is not oil, petroleum product or crude, and therefore not subject to the excise tax to fund the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. This will save the producers and refiners about $20 million a year on Keystone XL alone. That $20 million which won’t be paid into the Oil Spill Trust Fund, thanks to the House’s ruling.

At least one Nebraska Congressman has heard the people in this regard. Fortenberry, you have repeatedly called for a slow down so more studies can be conducted. And oh my, how right you look now, in light of the National Transportation and Safety Board’s (NTSB) scathing criticism of the entire tar sand high pressure pipeline regulations and PHMSA, the administration which oversees America’s underground pipes. Fortenberry, you understand that the Nebraska people don’t want to be test dummies for more of these bursting pipelines.

Senator’s Johanns and Nelson, you have been little help other than squabbling among yourselves on whether the state has any rights in routing such a pipeline. Nelson said the states do; Johanns said it is a federal matter. It turns out Nelson was right, but Nebraska had been negligent in their foresight and didn’t have citing legislation on the books as other states had done.

Speaker Flood, you missed the boat entirely when you were initially opposed to a special session and seemed willing to let the U.S. Department of State work this out with TransCanada and step all over Nebraskans. The people pushed back and you finally met with the TransCanada folks in Norfolk and there, you completely missed the opportunity to stand firm and demand this pipeline avoid the aquifer. TransCanada blew some smoke saying they would build it even safer than the “safest pipeline ever built”, which seemed to be a bit of an oxymoron, and you agreed. Avoid a couple of Sandhills in Northern Holt County and all aquifer concerns seemed to disappear.

The entire Keystone XL issue in regards to Nebraska has become a much larger issue than fragile soils, rivers and aquifers. It is now the centerpiece and shining example of what civic duty and responsibility means to a society when their leaders refuse to listen to their concerns about safety, not only of their own water, but the water supplies that turned this once Great American Desert into one of most productive food suppliers in the entire world.

The IRS’s determination of the House’s ruling that this is not crude oil is correct. It is diluted bitumen; a highly toxic and poisonous concoction laced with benzene, which is a known cancer-causing agent. The House’s Ways and Means Committee ruling is insane, saying this is not oil or a petroleum product and therefore not subject to the tax in the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.

The NTSB report on the Michigan spill basically said we are not yet ready for pipelines of this type from a regulatory and safety perspective. They published at least nineteen recommendations that must occur before we proceed down this path.

So, we are about to make a decision. Are we basing it solely on TransCanada claims of jobs and taxes and energy independence? Their motive is crystal clear. They want to make billions for their stockholders. The delay has given us the time to learn that much if this “oil” is owned by foreign countries and will be exported. The delay has given us the chance to learn that Canadian tar sand oil being piped through our country will not be contributing to the Oil Spill Fund. The delay has given the NTSB a chance to review the process and lack of safety and response regulations. The delay has shed new light on this dangerous plan.

And everyone in this state owes a huge thank you to the landowners and organizations that forced the overambitious politicians to take a second look. If not for these courageous folks, who seem a lot more concerned about Nebraska’s safety than anyone we elected to protect our interests, this would have been a done deal.

Here’s what must happen before we proceed.

First: Smith, Fortenberry and Terry, you must make the House Ways and Means Committee change their ruling that tar sand is not oil, and that tar sand producers and refiners pay into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund.

Second: Heineman, you must deny the re-route based on the NTSB findings and wait until all their regulations are passed with proper legislation and tested for effectiveness.

Third: Johanns and Nelson, or Fisher or Kerrey, (depending on the election), if you are concerned about the safety of Nebraska citizens, you must put full court pressure on the President and the State Department to deny approval of the Keystone XL permit until the NTSB recommendations have been implemented.

Forth: Flood, if you truly want to be the next governor of Nebraska, you need to put the safety of the citizens and economic interests of our state above everything else. You can begin by listening to the proud Nebraskans who want to preserve our water and soil for generations to come.

Fifth: TransCanada, you need to stand up to your claim of being a “Good Neighbor” and find an alternative route, avoiding the Ogallala Aquifer, to get your foreign customers’ oil to the world market.

I could make a very long list of Nebraskans who have shown remarkable courage in the fight to protect Nebraska. They have withstood intense criticism, suffered the name-calling, yet continue to fight for all of us. They know who they are, and in my world, people who sacrifice their own self to protect others are called heroes.

I urge our political leaders to put the safety of our citizens and the preservation of our natural resources above all else and join them in their fight. I urge our readers to let the politicians know how you feel, pro, con or otherwise. This is a lasting decision which will have major consequences to all Nebraskans as well as set precedent for the future. Let your voices be heard. It is the Nebraska way.

If you transport petroleum products through a pipeline in the U.S.A. you have to pay an 8 cents per barrel excise tax to the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. If the Keystone XL goes through and they transport about 700,000 barrels a day, TransCanada would have to pay about $56,000 into the Spill Fund every day. That would be about $20 million a year.

But here is some breaking news. The Internal Revenue Service, the agency who has to collect these taxes, has ruled that TransCanada’s Keystone XL won’t have to pay the tax. What? These high pressure tar sand pipelines are spilling all over the place and they don’t have to pay in the Oil Spill Trust Fund? That is correct.

Why? The IRS has ruled the tar sand or diluted bitumen as it’s called after they dilute it with poisonous chemicals, is not oil! The IRS says it is not even a petroleum product! If I was reading this like you are, I would say, “Greg, you have been sniffing too many pipeline fumes! You must have your information wrong!”

Lying on my desk as I write this I am looking at the Internal Revenue Service TAM (Technical Advice Memorandum), dated January 12, 2011. In this document they cite a House Ways and Means Committee ruling from years ago that “crude oil” does not include shale oil liquids from coal, tar sands, or biomass, or refined oil. They also describe what constitutes “petroleum products”.

The IRS report concludes by stating, “The House Report clearly indicates Congress’s intent to exclude tar sand from the definitions of crude oil and petroleum product… accordingly, tar sands imported to the United States are not subject to the excise tax…”

TransCanada calls it oil when they want to sell us on their dangerous idea. They call it an oil pipeline when they overstate the number of jobs this will create. They call it an oil pipeline when they exaggerate the amount of property taxes they will actually pay.

The Senators and Representatives who have bought into this lunacy call it oil. But now, when they realize it will be taxed, suddenly it’s not oil any longer!

So (pardon me) what the hell is it? Well, I am going to tell you for two reasons. One, TransCanada won’t, and two I think you need to know exactly what will be going right through our drinking water.

It is Dilbit, diluted bitumen. We don’t worry too much about the bitumen. It is a mixture of clay and sand and petroleum product and has the consistency of peanut butter. You can’t pipe that through a 36 inch pipe, so they have to dilute it. That’s the part to worry about.

About 40 to 70 percent of what’s in the pipe is bitumen. That leaves 30 to 60 percent of something else. Those are the diluents, and they can kill you! A Dilbit safety data sheet says: Smells like rotten eggs because of the hydrogen sulphide; contains Benzene which causes cancer in humans along with serous blood disorders including leukemia, and can damage nervous systems including fingers feet and arms.

Dilbit contains PNA’s, polynulclear aromatic hydrocarbons, which if comes into contact with skin can cause skin cancers. Inhalation of PNA’s can cause lung cancer.

The safety data sheet goes on to say about dilbit: Don’t inhale the vapors as the hydrogen sulphide may cause irritation, breathing failure, coma and death without any warning odor being sensed.

If spilled on land, the safety sheet says “Keep public away. Vapors or dust may be harmful or fatal.” If spilled in water says, “Product will submerge after a few days of weathering.” Folks, that means it sinks in water. TransCanada says it floats. We know that is not true as Enbridge is still cleaning the bottom of the Kalamazoo River after a million gallons spilled in 2010.

So what is it? It’s tax free according to the House of Representatives because it is not “oil”. It is oil according to TransCanada. Oh, something else Congress did. They set a $350 million liability limit on each oil spill, so if the company goes over that amount to clean it up, the oil Spill Trust Fund kicks in. (But TransCanada won’t be paying into the fund for the Keystone XL, so who pays? The Michigan spill has cost over $800 million so far and is still rising!)

So Congressman Adrian Smith, whose third district is about to be sliced open so all this poison can run right over and through our water, why didn’t you tell us about tar sand not being “oil” and not subject to the tax to clean up spills? We have asked you about the Keystone XL numerous times, and not once did you bring this up. It all comes from the House of Representatives, your body, and this pipe is going to spill on your third district. Why aren’t you screaming at the top of your lungs to force Keystone XL to pay into the oil Spill Liability Trust Fund? Since this pipe is coming within three miles of York, Nebraska, the York News-Times would like to know.

But if you are still one of those who think this will create 200,000 jobs, end our dependency on unfriendly oil, and will never spill, then I submit, maybe it is you who have been sniffing too many pipeline fumes.

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