Say It Ain't So Already

Nebraska Ranchers Cheer Keystone Rejection

January 19, 2012 at 5:02 PM Leave a comment

You can be sure you won’t hear about this from the corporate media:

Image via BoldNebraska.org

Nebraska ranchers celebrated the Obama administration’s rejection of the proposed Keystone pipeline on Wednesday as a hardfought victory for the state’s environmentally sensitive Sandhills region – even as Republican lawmakers vowed to keep fighting for the project.

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Ben Gotschall, a fourth-generation Sandhills rancher, said pipeline opponents shared the belief that the future safety of land and water and the health and wellness of people and communities were more important than foreign oil profits.

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At the same time, many landowners in central Nebraska, where the pipeline would have run through a portion of a sensitive aquifer, cheered the pipeline’s rejection, which looks almost certain to become a key political issue in the upcoming presidential campaign.

“The president has done the right thing and it is my hope that a foolhardy attempt by the Republicans to go around him can be headed off,” said Randy Thompson, who owns land in central Nebraska on the pipeline’s original route.

The rejection was “a major victory for the environment and for the people of the state of Nebraska,” Nebraska Sierra Club lobbyist Ken Winston said, adding that the pipeline was pushed by “short-term profiteering and bad energy policies.”

“We do not want to go back down that road,” Winston said.

Bold Nebraska director Jane Kleeb said the advocacy group that organized protests in Nebraska and Washington would never stop fighting plans for the “risky export pipeline.”

It is stunning and tragic the extent to which the voice of We the People is absent from our media.

Entry filed under: Energy. Tags: export pipeline, sandhills region.