Tell Gov Branstad: Stop the IA Bakken Oil Pipeline

Governor Branstad, the Iowa Bakken Oil Pipeline will be a climate disaster.  Building it could harm Iowa's water quality, contribute to catastrophic climate change, and threaten the property rights of everyday Iowans across the state.  You must find that this pipeline is not in the public interest and reject it.

 A Fortune 500 oil corporation down in Texas just announced plans to build a dangerous oil pipeline through 17 Iowa counties in order to transport crude, dirty, explosive Bakken oil being hydrofracked in North Dakota down through Iowa and Illinois and on to the Gulf of Mexico.  The proposed route would closely track the Des Moines River watershed across the length of the state, one of the biggest rivers in Iowa that hundreds of thousands of Iowans depend on for clean drinking water.

If this pipeline is built, it could seriously harm Iowa’s already impaired water quality, threaten the property rights of thousands of everyday Iowans, and contribute to the catastrophic climate change that has been causing floods and droughts across Iowa for years now and which, if left unchecked, could eventually destroy all life on this planet as we know it.

Iowa already has enough problems dealing with corporate ag and factory farm manure pollution.  The last thing we need is Big Oil pumping 320,000 gallons of dirty Bakken oil through Iowa every single day.  Because it’s only a matter of time before pipelines break.  It’s happened already in Arkansas, Michigan, Montana, and North Dakota.  We don’t need more oil spills coming to Iowa and further polluting the drinking and recreational water of millions of everyday Iowans.

This project also threatens the property rights of thousands of family farmers and rural Iowans.  The only way Big Oil can build this pipeline is by stealing Iowans property through eminent domain, and that’s just not right.

This plan was hatched in secret, and the first Iowans even knew of the proposal was when the Texas oil corporation, Transfer Energy Partners, sent letters to thousands of property owners asking for permission to come survey their land.

The good news is, we still have time to stop this.  Transfer Energy Partners and their subsidiary corporations haven’t applied for a permit yet, and there will be weeks of public comment where we can stand up and speak out for what’s right.

That’s why now is the time to start organizing.  We need to send a strong message now that everyday Iowans do not want this project in our state.

Strength lies in unity, hope lies in resistance.