Take action today to stop tomorrow's oil pipeline spill

We've had enough oil spills and gas leaks. It's time to give unsafe pipelines the scrutiny they deserve.

Take action to stop the fast-tracking of unsafe oil and gas pipelines! Crude oil flows along a (previously) dry creek bed in Ventura, CA after a pipeline rupture last month. Dear ________, Monday will mark six years since the largest oil spill ever on U.S. soil, when a crude oil pipeline ruptured and gushed more than one million gallons of toxic tar sands into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.1 Since then we've seen so many oil and gas pipelines fail and burst open -- dumping oil, leaking gas, or sometimes even exploding.2 Too many oil and gas pipelines are getting approved without adequate environmental reviews, risk assessments, or public input. Take action now to change that. For years, the Army Corps of Engineers has been abusing a provision of the Clean Water Act in order to fast-track the approval of dozens of oil and gas pipelines throughout the country without adequate environmental review or opportunity for public input. The law requires environmental review for proposed oil and gas pipelines in order to protect our communities and our waterways; however, the Corps has been circumventing this requirement by treating massive fossil fuel pipelines as thousands of individual projects -- each too small to require a review on its own. For example, the Corps approved the 485-mile Gulf Coast Pipeline (the southern half of Keystone XL) in Oklahoma and Texas by treating its thousands of water crossings as 2,227 "single and complete projects" that each qualified separately under the Corps' Nationwide Permit 12. That's why there was no environmental review or opportunity for public involvement before the pipeline was given a rubber-stamp approval. The Corps is now considering reissuing this permit, and continuing this outrageous tactic to help Big Oil build more pipelines.3 Take action right now to tell the Army Corps of Engineers to stop shutting out the public, and stop circumventing environmental reviews for oil and gas pipelines! After years of pipeline spill after pipeline spill, it's clear that each new oil or gas pipeline is a disaster waiting to happen. At the very least, the Army Corps of Engineers should do their due diligence in assessing the risks these pipelines pose -- and giving affected communities a say in the decision-making process -- before they approve construction of a new pipeline. Thank you for protecting our communities,  Lena Moffitt Director, Sierra Club Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign Share this alert on Facebook Share this alert on Twitter [1] Andrew Withers, Detroit Metro Times, Enbridge reaches $177 million settlement over Kalamazoo oil spill, July 20, 2016. [2] Up to 143,000 gallons of crude oil spilled last year on a beach near Santa Barbara. Nearly 90,000 gallons in the Gulf of Mexico in May. More than 20,000 gallons in the San Joaquin Valley a few weeks later, added to the 21,000 gallons spilled from the same pipeline last year. And last month, nearly 30,000 gallons of crude oil gushed from a ruptured pipeline near a beach in Ventura, California -- almost making it to the Pacific Ocean. It's not just oil pipelines either: This past April, a 30-inch natural gas pipeline ruptured and exploded in Salem Township, Pennsylvania, destroying a nearby home and sending a man to the hospital with severe burns. [3] For more details on the proposal to reissue and modify nationwide permits, click here, June 3, 2016.