{"id":20441,"date":"2012-11-05T14:04:33","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T20:04:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=20441"},"modified":"2012-11-08T10:54:27","modified_gmt":"2012-11-08T16:54:27","slug":"mapping-the-keystone-xl-pipeline-through-texas-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/11\/05\/mapping-the-keystone-xl-pipeline-through-texas-and-beyond\/","title":{"rendered":"Mapping the Keystone XL Pipeline Through Texas (And Beyond)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" name=\"e-Origination\" src=\"http:\/\/www.steamingmules.com\/keystone\/nprMapTx.html\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Courtesy the <a href=\"http:\/\/keystone.steamingmules.com\" target=\"_blank\">Keystone Mapping Project<\/a>. \u00a9<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thomasbachand.com\" target=\"_blank\">Thomas Bachand<\/a> 2012.<\/p>\n<p>When San Francisco Bay area landscape photographer <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thomasbachand.com\/\">Thomas Bachand fi<\/a>rst heard about the Keystone XL pipeline, which will take heavy oil harvested from tar pits in Canada to refineries in Texas; he started looking around for a map of it. And he quickly discovered there wasn&#8217;t one to be found.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Obfuscation is a big part of this [pipeline] project,&#8221; Bachand tells StateImpact Texas. To show where the pipeline will go &#8212; how many rivers, wetlands and streams it will cross, for instance &#8212; Bachand started the<a href=\"http:\/\/keystone.steamingmules.com\/\"> Keystone Mapping Project<\/a>. Painstakingly collecting what information he could get from public agencies, he was able to put together an<a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/05\/15\/an-interactive-map-of-the-keystone-xl-pipeline-in-texas\/\"> interactive map<\/a> of the pipeline, which you can view above.<\/p>\n<p>We recently spoke by phone with Bachand to learn about how he put the map together.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"question\">Q: <\/span>So how&#8217;d you get involved in this?<\/p>\n<p class=\"answer\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"answer\">A: <\/span>I started out wanting to scout the route for a potential photography project. So I went looking for a map, and discovered there wasn\u2019t one. I went over to the State Department website, and found some great information, but then I discovered there wasn\u2019t any route information. So while you could find where a wetland was, for example, it would say, \u2018Wetland 500 feet from Mile Post 182.\u2019 You couldn\u2019t find where Mile Post 182 was. The State Department was helpful, but they weren\u2019t allowed to release the information. So I started looking around, and I went to the states. One gave me the mile post information, but everyone else either didn\u2019t have the information, or they wouldn\u2019t release it.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p class=\"answer\">Some of the states would give me mile post information. Others would only give me route information. And others, like Texas, I had to pull the information off the Railroad Commission website, which was rather laborious. And Oklahoma absolutely stonewalled me. Nebraska though, has been more cooperative the more I\u2019ve gotten to know them. And Canada I can\u2019t get any information from.<\/p>\n<p class=\"answer\">And TransCanada [the Canadian company behind the pipeline], the runaround I got from them. Their excuse was that [releasing the information] was a national security risk, which is just a joke.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"question\">Q: <\/span>So where&#8217;d you go from there?<\/p>\n<p class=\"answer\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"answer\">A: <\/span>At first, I thought there must be a legitimate reason that this information wasn\u2019t public. And ironically, it will be public information once the project is finished. The whole thing is designed between the State Department and TransCanada to keep the wider public in the dark until they can get the pipeline in the ground.<\/p>\n<p class=\"answer\">They don\u2019t want one landowner knowing what the other is doing. And they certainly don\u2019t want me, sitting here in California, knowing what\u2019s going on with the pipeline route.<\/p>\n<p class=\"question\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"question\">Q: <\/span>What&#8217;s been the response to the map?<\/p>\n<p class=\"answer\"><span class=\"abbr\" title=\"answer\">A: <\/span>It\u2019s been extremely positive, no matter who you talk to, except for TransCanada. One guy at the State department was very encouraging to me. He said, \u2018I love what you\u2019re doing, and we need more people like you doing this kind of thing.\u2019<\/p>\n<p class=\"answer\">The thing about the Keystone, it transcends ideological boundaries. Environmentalists have their reason why they\u2019re involved, but then you also have landowners and people who are on the opposite ideological divide who have a whole other reason.<\/p>\n<p>Bachand&#8217;s map of the Keystone XL pipeline can be<a href=\"http:\/\/keystone.steamingmules.com\/\"> found on this website<\/a>. You can see water crossings, proximity to oil and gas wells, as well as evacuation zones. Bachand next hopes to map where TransCanada has used eminent domain to route the pipeline through private land.<\/p>\n<p>The southern leg from Oklahoma to Texas is currently under construction, and TransCanada <a href=\"http:\/\/www.transcanada.com\/keystone.html\">expects a northern leg to be permitted early next year,<\/a> with construction beginning shortly afterward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To show where the Keystone XL pipeline will go &#8212; how many rivers, wetlands and streams it will cross, for instance &#8212; one photographer started the Keystone Mapping Project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":7654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[59],"tags":[214,73],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20441"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20441"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20717,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20441\/revisions\/20717"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}