From: New Republic
BY
BY
Conflicted about Keystone? Consider the horrific impact of an oil spill in Arkansas.
Jason Thompson used to love fishing in
the lake he can see from his window in Mayflower, Arkansas, but these
days, when he throws a line out into the water, the lure he reels back
is covered in a sour, stinking black tar, the skirt of the jig stuck
uselessly together. When he brings the fingers that touched the line up
to his nose, he gets a whiff of the same putrid stench that filled the
air for weeks after the oil pipeline burst—the smell that still rises
out of the ground every time it rains.
Thompson hasn’t been fishing much. Ever since Exxon Mobil’s Pegasus pipeline burst in March and spilled an estimated 210,000 gallons
of Canadian heavy crude oil two miles from his house, he’s had
headaches of preternatural intensity, so bad they wake him up in the
middle of the night. He has nosebleeds, and hemorrhoids even though he’s
only 36; there’s a rash on his neck that has only gotten worse in the
eight months since the spill; and some days he feels so weak that he can
hardly get out of bed. He estimates that he has lost almost 35 pounds
since the rupture, falling from a fit 220 down to 185. When he went to
see a doctor in April, he was told he has a mysterious spot on one
lung—but he hasn’t been able to afford to go back.
Hundreds of
people in this working-class town of 2,200 have complained of symptoms
like Thompson’s. And their maladies—respiratory disorders, nausea,
fatigue, nosebleeds, bowel issues, throbbing headaches—echo the ones
that appeared in Marshall, Michigan, where an Enbridge Energy pipeline burst in 2010.
The two pipelines were carrying the same kind of oil: a heavy crude, or
bitumen, mined in the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, which is thicker
and rawer than the oil extracted in the United States. This is also the
oil that would flow in record quantities through the controversial
Keystone XL pipeline, if President Barack Obama decides to approve it.
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AP Photo/Jeannie Nuss - THIS COULD BE YOUR STREET
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Crews work to clean up oil in Mayflower, days after a pipeline ruptured and spewed oil over lawns and roadways. MORE
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