Comments by "Thump Er the Sweaty Fat Guy" (@SweatyFatGuy) on "Why Can't America Fill a Pothole? | 5 Minute Video" video.

  1. I grew up in a state that is supposed to have the XL pipeline run through it. When you take into account the risk to the citizens who live in that area vs the benefit to them the pipeline does not prove to be a risk worth taking. Here is why. There is a massive underground lake stretching from Colorado to Iowa, South Dakota to Texas, its called the Ogallala Aquifer. This is where all the drinking water and agricultural water in the region comes from. Sure its a fly over state so who cares about the proles who live out there right? Lets turn the entirety of Nebraska and Kansas into Flint Michigan with a single oil spill so a Canadian company can pipe oil from the tar sands to refineries in the south, then be sold on the world market, which will have zero to negligible benefit to the few million or so people who live in the area. Pipelines do break, leaks can take months to detect and find the source, and fouling that underground lake of fresh water when states like California and Arizona want to pull water from Lake Superior and Lake Michigan so they can have green golf courses and lawns in the desert, yeah that makes sense. Lets take a giant swath of the nation that produces more than grass on the vast majority of its real estate, and turn it into a potential wasteland so a few others can profit from it. Who cares, its only a bunch of hicks in pickup trucks and nothingness. You might want to look into what those states produce in regards to food, and the amount of money they generate with such a small population. Would you want to run hazardous waste through your yard and water supply for the profit of others and none for yourself? Is the risk worth it?
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  2.  @Ethan.Lamoureux  prove it. Prove how the people of those states will see any benefit for the risk they are all being forced to take. Go ahead... Prove the Ogallala does not exist, or could be fouled by a simple spill. They actually moved it from the sandhills because that is the direct point where water refills the underground lake. Any idea how many wells there are along the pipeline route? Prove that the company will not simply put the oil on the world market, and it will not be subject to centralized distribution where it can end up on the other side of the planet, and will instead be used here in the USA. Simple geography, physics, and history are all I need to back up what I said. Yeah I am more into ethanol fuel, because it makes more power, burns cleaner which keeps my engines cleaner so they last longer, it can handle 13:1 compression easily, and I can make the stuff at home from tree sap and weeds. But I am also aware of how the economy works, you should look into that a bit more, and I am entirely against marxism. I still have a couple winter beaters that run on craptastic pump gas, but all my hotrods and muscle cars run on ethanol. Its hard to give up the power and drivability you get from it and go back to being forced to neuter the engine to run pump gas. It pisses me off that they have tried to claim the way I make energy off grid as support for their abhorrent ideology. It equally irritates me that clueless people decide they know more than people who are actually involved and knowledgeable. But that is irrelevant to the fact that a pipeline across the Ogallala is a risk to everyone who lives in the region, and they get zero benefit from it. How do I know? Because the NG pipeline that went through a couple decades ago never made good on their claims of paying the landowners who had to accept it going across their land. The tar sands oil is more abrasive and those pipelines fail more often, and it doesn't take much oil to foul drinking water rendering the entire state nearly uninhabitable. I grew up drinking that water straight from irrigation pipe, there is nothing like it in the rest of the world. So prove how it is acceptable for people in those states to bear the risk with no benefit. I'll wait.
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