<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" While we&amp;#039;re on the subject of Nebraska, Republican Governor Dave Heineman, who pinballed all over the place on our old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline, before (apparently) coming down in favor of bringing through his state the dirtiest fossil fuel in the history of man, took to the op-ed&amp;#039;s over the weekend to attempt to explain his evolving position on the issue. (To recap, last fall, in a special session of the Nebraska legislature, some relatively tough new siting regulations were put in place for the state which, remarkably, didn&amp;#039;t have any. Then, after the first of the year, Heineman got the legislature to defang the new regulations by, among other tactics, removing the review process for the pipeline from the state&amp;#039;s independent Public Services Commission and handing it to the state&amp;#039;s Department Of Environmental Quality which, obviously, is part of the executive branch of the government. Opponents of the pipeline filed a lawsuit against the new regulations on May 24.)  Heineman&amp;#039;s op-ed caught the attention of York Daily News publisher Greg Awtry, who noticed that something was missing from the governor&amp;#039;s latest missive. Namely, any mention of the Oglalla Aquifer, the massive underground reservoir through which the pipeline is still scheduled to pass.... Many of you probably think that after all the statewide and national hoopla that TransCanada has relented and proposed a new route that would avoid the aquifer. You would be wrong. The &amp;quot;new&amp;quot; routed would still enter and exit our state in the same places as before. All TransCanada did was to toss Nebraska a bone, and like an over-hungry guard dog we leaped at it, and are now distracted from the real issue, exactly as they planned. TransCanada adjusted their proposed route about 30 miles in northern Nebraska to avoid an area of the Sandhills where the water is abnormally close to the surface. That&amp;#039;s it. They did nothing about the over 200 miles where the pipeline carrying this noxious cancer-causing benzene-laced diluted bitumen (tar-sand oil) is still planned to cross our aquifer, or &amp;quot;lifeblood to Nebraska&amp;#039;s agricultural industry&amp;quot; as Heineman referred to it when he was so concerned about &amp;quot;it&amp;quot; last August. Sadly, it appears, the fix is in here. The lawsuit could take years and, meanwhile, Heineman has insisted that the contested new environmental review process go forward. He is prepared to play Russian \u2014 or, in this case, Canadian \u2014 roulette with the circulatory system of American agriculture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a14400/dave-heineman-xl-pipeline-op-ed-9679323/>