Published on Jul 4, 2013 sheeza ware
On July 1, the East Texas Observer was asked to document pipe being repaired due to anomalies in Douglass, Texas. For three days the Observer tried to film, but was deliberately blocked by TransCanada from filming the repairs. Why is TransCanada hiding their repair work? And why so many anomalies in this pipeline the company is billing as the “safest pipeline ever built”?
They’re hiding the fact that they’re using substandard pipe, cutting out defects, leaving pieces shorter than the required length, and then welding the too-short pieces together, all of this in defiance of regulatory specifications. The people living in this area can expect an early pipeline break and environmental catastrophe from the nasty heated and chemicalized tar sand bitumen to be carried in this jerry-rigged pipeline.
It won’t change TransCanada’s practice of laying and jerry rigging substandard pipe and won’t prevent any future breaks, but what the East Texas Observer and Mike Bishop could do now is make sure to save this documentation, then start making and documenting complaints to their local and state representatives, also the Texas Railroad Commission (I think that’s the correct state agency), as well as documenting complaints on up the ladder at TransCanada, so that when arrests and actual lawful trials begin, The People can clearly see who should be merely incarcerated in an already built, stocked and staffed FEMA camp or swiftly dispatched to their maker.