"Make Love Not Gas"

"The chances of a massive gas pipeline explosion in your Eugene backyard are pretty slim. For one thing, Lane County currently has just one natural gas pipeline, and it follows the I-5 corridor. For another, natural gas advocates will tell you that pipeline explosions, dramatic as they might be, are few and far between.

Then again, BP told the federal government that it didn’t need to file an environmental impact statement before the Deepwater Horizon began drilling the well that’s now filling the Gulf of Mexico with toxic oil sludge, killing fish, fowl and marine life, because, after all, what could go wrong? Big oil companies drill all the time without causing disastrous oil spills. A little 36-inch-in-diameter gas pipeline never hurt anybody. Unless, of course, it leaks. Or requires a clearcut or losing some of your property rights or poisons a river."

Camilla Mortensen reports for the Eugene Weekly May 27, 2010.