To the editor:

Recently there were protests against the XL pipeline at the Kansas Statehouse in Topeka. There were environmentalists and people seeking jobs in the petroleum industry on either side.

Ironically, I was in Topeka at a doctor’s office when I read a National Geographic article on tar sands oil removal in 2009. In the opening picture was an area completely devoid of topsoil, trees, grass or anything else. The area was along the Athabasca River in Alberta on the lands of Chipewyan and Cree First Nations. Whole groups of people were moved from areas they’d resided on for millennia. This pipeline cuts through the lands of the three affiliated tribes of North Dakota and lots of Lakota territory in South Dakota and the counties in Kansas where some of the federally recognized tribes live.

Much of the area above Kansas has water supplied from the Ogallala Aquifer. If this water table is polluted by an oil spill, the results would be dire. Not to mention that this aquifer is already overutilized by agriculture in denial in dry areas and coal plants needing slurry water. Do people need to go screaming in denial over the tipping point toward disaster to learn a lesson? Do the unlistening people have to take the thinking people against their will to this point? Job creation should be in sustainable circumstances. Destroying large areas of virgin country to extract oil that pollutes more than other oils makes no sense. Can people ever listen before the consequences occur?