BREAKING NEWS! At the Caldwell County Commissioners Court Meeting this morning Kinder Morgan Vice President Allen Fore made a concession saying that due to landowner environmental concerns, they will promise to incorporate language into their contracts that states that this pipeline will be for “natural gas only.”
This does not alleviate the Wimberley Valley Watershed Association’s long list of concerns about this pipelines impacts on our region’s environment and landowners property values. The main one being that this route through the heart of the Texas Hill Country sets a dangerous precedent for the future. Other projects will follow if we let this one through and we will be fighting this same battle over and over again with other companies.
This concession also does nothing to address the abuse of landowners rights for corporate profit.
Additionally, this project’s route through densely populated areas is dangerous and so are the very loud and toxic off-gassing compressor stations that will be along the route every 40-100 miles.
Construction of this magnitude will cause heavy sedimentation in our water supply. Condensate leaks from the natural gas transport process could contaminate our sensitive underground ecosystem and be very dangerous to our sole source drinking water and endangered species with permeable skin such as the Barton Springs Salamander.
We will release more information detailing our concerns very soon.
We appreciate Kinder Morgan’s responsiveness to our communities concerns about transporting toxic hydrocarbons such as petroleum through our karst aquifers. We hope they will continue to listen to us and realize that any kind of pipeline over the aquifers that supply drinking water to the nations fastest growing cities is unacceptable.
If Kinder Morgan puts this claim into the writing of their contracts, it is an important step in the right direction for all of us standing against this project. We also understand that amending contracts like these in the future is not hard for big corporations like theirs.
Please attend the Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer CD Meeting on PHPL this Thursday at 6:00 PM in Austin.
Thank YOU for your continued support. We are making a difference, but it’s not over yet. Help us get this project out of the Hill Country for good!
savethehillcountry.org