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Arkansas Matters:

"You can see it's just nasty. It was never like this before," said Robin Lang as she pointed to green, turbid water in her backyard.

Two days before the two-month anniversary of the Mayflower oil spill, folks like Lang who live on "The Cove" section of Lake Conway are still wondering when life will be back to normal.

Oil collecting boom stretches across her lake view, and an airboat patrols daily collecting remnants of the spill.

Lang says wildlife is nowhere to be seen.

"It's like a desert area," she said. "Everything just left. I mean what would want to be in this water?"

While Exxon paid the residents of The Cove $2,500 each for their troubles, there is no agreement to protect their property values. There is also no one cleaning the properties in The Cove as they are in Northwoods subdivision.

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The government of Canadian British Columbia has said 'No' to Enbridge's West Coast tar sands pipeline project, the Northern Gateway pipeline.

The Calgary Herald:

"(Enbridge Northern Gateway) has presented little evidence about how it will respond in the event of a spill," the province wrote in its submission to the Northern Gateway Pipeline Joint Review Panel.

"Put another way, it is not clear from the evidence that NG (Northern Gateway) will in fact be able to respond effectively to spills either from the pipeline itself, or from tankers transporting diluted Bitumen from the proposed Kitimat terminal."

The strongly worded submission made clear the B.C. government believes the company has yet to lay out how it would respond to a catastrophic spill - something it said is particularly important here.

"The project before JRP (Joint Review Panel) is not a typical pipeline. For example: the behavior in water of the material to be transported is incompletely understood; the terrain the pipeline would cross is not only remote, it is in many places extremely difficult to access; the impact of spills into pristine river environments would be profound," the province wrote.

"In these particular and unique circumstances, NG should not be granted a certificate on the basis of a promise to do more study and planning once the certificate is granted. The standard in this particular case must be higher," it added.

"'Trust me' is not good enough in this case."

Founder of 350.org Bill McKibben said Friday, the decision marks an important win for the climate movement. Anti-tar sands campaigners will now be looking for Obama to follow suit and reject TransCanada's bid to build the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, a separate export route for Alberta's tar sands that would pass south to the Texas coast.

"For years the tar sands promoters have said: ‘if we don't build Keystone XL the tar sands will get out some other way,'" McKibben said in a statement.

But, he continued, "British Columbians just slammed the door on the most obvious other way, so now it's up to President Obama. If he approve Keystone XL he bails out the Koch Brothers and other tar sands investors; if he rejects the pipeline, then an awful lot of that crude is going to stay in the ground where it belongs."

This also certainly makes plans to export tar sands oil much more complicated.

In a diary posted at Daily Kos, Van Jones writes:

"We have been hearing a lot about scandals recently.

But if President Obama approves a pipeline equal to more than seven new coal-fired power plants? And does so just months after promising to act AGAINST climate change?

Now THAT'S a scandal.

President Obama said in his second inaugural address that failing to act on climate change would "betray future generations." Now, it looks like he will do exactly that by approving the Keystone XL pipeline."

Then after asking for help to spread the message in his video (above) he writes:

"If President Obama truly thinks this project is good for America, he should embrace it publicly. He should call it the "Obama Tar Sands Pipeline." He should show up at the ribbon cutting. If he refuses to do that and still approves Keystone XL, the first thing that pipeline will run over is his credibility on climate."

I think Mr. Jones put that very mildly, but agree with it all completely.

Guest host Mark Thompson, “The War Room” host Michael Shure, Sierra Club Washington representative Lena Moffitt and BuzzFeed contributor Michael Hastings break down the Koch brothers’ involvement in petroleum coke being openly stored on the banks of Detroit River. Petroleum coke is a by-product of the oil refining process and can be harmful to the environment when burned. “This is the dirtiest by-product from the dirtiest source of oil on the planet,” Moffit says, adding that the 42817 ZIP code in Detroit “is one of the most polluted ZIP codes in the country. … This is the unfortunate lab where we can see what it means to bring tar sands to our country.”

Fox 2 News Headlines
A Marathon spokesperson told Fox 2 they sold the pet coke. It is now the property of Koch Carbon. Koch Carbon is part of Koch Industries, run by Charles and David Koch.

When the huge black mounds that sit on the riverbanks of southwest Detroit just appeared one day, residents were puzzled and concerned.

“One of the biggest concerns when we saw the black piles is what is it, and where is it coming from?” said State Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-Detroit). She said residents contacted her worried that the black piles could be toxic.

Freep.com:

U.S. Reps. Gary Peters, a Democrat from Bloomfield Township, and John Conyers, a Democrat from Detroit, sent a joint letter to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality urging the agency to consider the material's potential impact on the river and nearby residents.

"We fear the storage of petroleum coke along the river poses a potential threat to water and air quality. The material may contain trace amounts of metal and could have damaging health impacts if fugitive dust enters the air. Petroleum coke that enters the water may continue to frustrate efforts to prevent contamination from runoff," according to the letter.

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Today, Monday May 13th, New Yorkers from Occupy the Pipeline, Occupy Sandy, and over twenty partner groups will march and rally to greet President Obama when he attends a fundraiser with members of the 1% at the Waldorf Astoria on Park Avenue.

Carbon dioxide levels have now surpassed 400 parts per million, a long-feared milestone. We must act now.

Join us if you stand against fossil fuel pipelines, against fracking, against tar sands, and FOR a country powered by wind, water and solar.

Gather in Bryant Park starting at 5 (meet near the fountain off 6th avenue at 41st Street). Reverend Billy and his choir will lead us off with a rousing blessing and song. We'll begin to march at 5:30, then rally in front of the Waldorf Astoria at 6:30. Please wear yellow and orange to demonstrate your support for a clean energy future.

RSVP and Share on Facebook!

Event Partners: 350 NYC, 350 NJ, 350.org, 99Rise, Brooklyn For Peace, Coalition Against the Rockaway Pipeline (CARP), CREDO, CUNY Divest, Food & Water Watch, Global Kids Inc., Green Party of NY, Human Impacts Institute, NYC Friends of Clearwater, NYU Divest, Occupy the Pipeline, Occupy Sandy, Restore the Rock, Sane Energy Project, Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter, Sierra Club National, United for Action, World Can't Wait, WESPAC, YANA (You Are Never Alone).

-- from the ‘Your Inbox: Occupied’ team

The Overpass Light Brigade has a new target: The Keystone XL pipeline. This video on that subject is the pièce de résistance.

It was created by Dusan Harminc, a Minnesota filmmaker and time-lapse animator. The brigade spent three long nights shooting at various locations in Wisconsin that are emblematic of either dirty energy (oil container units in the Port of Milwaukee) or clean alternatives (nearby wind turbines). The intention is to send President Obama a 'video letter' since he is soon to decide on the issue. Will President Obama make good on his electoral promises and enthusiasm for a new energy future, or will he capitulate to the power and greed of Dirty Oil?

On each of the three shoots, as the time-lapse progressed, the brigade's volunteer "Holders of the Lights" stood for three or more hours in the cold. It took about 12 hours of field work in addition to video production and transportation to create the one-minute video. Enjoy.

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