Since once again our crack (or maybe "on crack") major national media spent an inordinate amount of time over the last few days covering the Casey Anthony trial - an event that wasn't really first-tier national news - you may not have heard about the massive oil spill, courtesy of Exxon Mobil, in the wilds of Montana, on the Yellowstone River.
We would be extremely surprised if the corporate executives at Exxon didn't prefer to have their story buried.
Sadly, none of the news we've found about the current ecological disaster has surprised us. First, Exxon said it was just a small spill, nothing to worry about. Then, when pressed, they admitted that the spill could easily go far beyond their initial 10 mile containment zone. This isn't just any zone, mind you. That zone is the Yellowstone River, which flows out of the famed Yellowstone National Park, that contains some of America's most important natural scenery and wildlife.
As we have grown to expect from oil companies like Exxon Mobil, no contingency plan seems to have been crafted, in case a spill like this should happen - which it obviously did. While the cleanup continues, the company still does not have a repair strategy for the "leak."
Montana's Governor Schweitzer did tour the spill site, and said the cleanup effort was "pretty good" so far - but if the oil companies had been doing their jobs properly, it never would have happened at all.
Anyone who understands geography and is aware of the weather in the U.S. this year should understand with astounding clarity, that what happened in Montana won't stay in Montana. Some oil will slip through - and any chemicals like the carcinogen Correxit, used during the Gulf oil disaster of last year, that are dumped into the water to break up the oil, will flow downstream.
Downstream, through a series of rivers and tributaries that are sufffering through some of the worst flooding in history.
Through the flooded city of Minot, North Dakota, down the Missouri River, through the flooded river towns of South Dakota, Iowa, and Nebraska. Down into the state of Missouri - and then into the Mississippi River, where the remnants of the oil spill can poison even more fish, farmland, and wildlife, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.
For those Nebraskans who keep looking at the proposed Keystone XL2 pipeline, and can only see short-term dollar signs, we invite them to speak with the folks in Valdez, Alaska, people throughout small towns on the Gulf of Mexico near New Orleans - or even scientists in Nebraska. The stories of increases in rare cancers and odd health problems is rampant, the economic problems continue, and there seems to be a never ending flow of damaged humans, animals, and landscape in those areas.
If we seem to be against the proposed pipeline project, and a little overprotective of the Ogallala Aquifer, we are - and we can't see how everyone else isn't as well.
Without the clean, life-giving water the aquifer provides to Nebraska and most of the Great Plains, our home region of the U.S. would be a desert - one where people could not survive, long-term. This isn't hyperbole; that region has experienced severe drought before, a chunk of time so damaging it earned its own derogatory nickname: the Dustbowl Era.
An oil spill in the aquifer could mean the poisoning of the water that gives life, not only to the people and animals of the Great Plains, but also to the crops that feed our whole country and much of the world.
It is time we abandoned the Keystone XL project as a state, and began actively investing in alternative energies like wind and solar - both of which, as Nebraskans, we know we have an abundance of.
This isn't some far-left wing, pot-smoking, hippie idea.
This is our life, and our home. It's time to put our families and our country ahead of corporate profit and short-term economic gain.
