Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Arkansas residents discover they can't stop pipeline from crossing their land



Photographer's project to put 'human face' on impact of planned Valero/Plains All American Pipeline project

ALISON MILLSAPS - Clara Dotson and Gordon Millsaps on Dotson's land, north of Dover. 

Alison Millsaps, an artist who lives in Dover with her husband, Gordon, and their three children, is shooting photographs to "put a human face on people who are not on board" with the Diamond Pipeline, a Valero/Plains All American Pipeline project planned to bisect Arkansas, cutting across their land.

One of those people is her mother-in-law, Clara Dotson, who has owned 80 acres eight miles north of Dover since the mid-1970s. Dotson, whose husband died in 1996, paid off the land by working in a factory. Though she lives in town, she has hung on to the land so she can pass it to her son and daughter-in-law, who have already picked out a spot where they want to build and farm.

The Diamond Pipeline project, which would transport Bakken Shale crude from Cushing, Okla., to Memphis, Tenn., where Valero has a refinery, came to light when the pipeline company asked the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission to survey property northeast of Little Rock that the commission manages for wildlife. Diamond Project LLC has not divulged the exact route of the pipeline, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says it is a privileged document and won't release it to the public. However, a rough map provided by Game and Fish shows the route bisecting the state north of Little Rock, and a brochure says construction is to start next year.  MORE

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