Pevec: On track to disaster
Letter to the editor
Why would our Department of Agriculture approve a rail line to ship dirty crude oil so thick it must travel in heated cars from Utah along the Colorado River, then through the Fraser River Valley, and all the way to Denver through the Moffat Tunnel and on to the Gulf Coast for processing? I was in Glenwood Springs Saturday for the second time to protest the proposed the Uinta Railroad line because this is a recipe for environmental disaster.
The daily evidence of disastrous climate change should be enough evidence that we don’t need more crude oil being pumped out, transported, refined, and burned. Fifty years of science shows that burning fossil fuels has overloaded our atmosphere with CO2 and created climatic instability worldwide. We cannot continue to use fossil fuels and expect anything but an ever-worsening global climate with wildfires, floods, landslides, and poor air quality and all the health problems that come with those disasters for people and wildlife.
Not only should we not be pumping and burning oil, but we should not be transporting it. Take a look at these 21 rail disasters involving oil spills compiled at sightline.org/2021/02/26/a-timeline-of-oil-train-derailments-in-pictures/. Millions of gallons of crude oil have been spilled, causing fires, land and river pollution, and human deaths and evacuations.
That report does not include the 2018 derailment in Iowa when 30 cars carrying crude oil went into a river and spilled 230,000 gallons of crude oil.
The latest train disaster involves toxic chemicals now poisoning the people in New Palestine, Ohio.
The Department of Agriculture has approved this proposed rail line. Please write to your senators and representatives to oppose this terrible plan that will threaten the Colorado River, our lands and people, and everyone downstream from us. You can call the USDA — 202-720-2791 — and the
Department of Transportation’s Secretary Buttigieg at 202-366-4000.
Thanks for helping to protect our rivers, land, wildlife, and people. No one wants to catch a trout bathed in crude oil.
Illène Pevec
Carbondale
