Today, 100 landowners, including 39 from Texas sent a letter to President Obama and

Secretary Clinton asking that their concerns be heard and their lives protected from the

dangers of TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

Landowners and concerned citizens from across the pipeline’s route-of-way have been

vocal in their opposition to Keystone XL, citing abuses of eminent domain and safety

concerns as key reasons decision makers should give TransCanada’s tar sands

pipeline a closer look. Just this month, affected citizens met with the Environmental

Protection Agency, the State Department, and U.S. Senators whose states are affected

in Washington, D.C.

Eleanor Fairchild, a landowner whose property would be cut in half by the Keystone XL

pipeline is concerned about the high potential for water contamination if the pipeline

leaks in to East Texas water supplies, especially in light of a new report detailing the

extreme danger this pipeline would pose to the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer. "We can learn to

live without oil, but we can not learn to live without water,” Eleanor says.

The letter details concerns of higher Midwest gas prices if Keystone XL is built along

with examples of bullying and threats from TransCanada that led many landowners to

sign agreements before knowing the full details of the project. “TransCanada is not only

using deceptive practices to take away our property rights, but is also threatening

precious drinking and farming water supplies by using conventional pipeline technology

for a highly corrosive and acidic unconventional fossil fuel,” say the landowners.

By sending this letter, landowners hope that a Supplemental Environmental Impact

Statement that the United States State Department is expected to release in April goes

into serious detail noting the differences between the tar sands oil this pipeline would

carry and conventional crude and the safety risks that come along with it.

Landowners urge that politics and foreign profit not be considered above their health

and safety. These landowners are people from diverse backgrounds and ways of life

and from every state along the pipeline’s proposed route. “After the political debate

about and the construction of this proposed pipeline ends, [landowners] are the ones

who must live with tar sands running through our property."