CD (Portland) — Cleanup and assessment efforts are continuing after a Canadian fossil fuel company’s pipeline spilled a large volume of crude tar sands oil into a northern Kansas creek which feeds a watershed providing drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people.

In what’s being called the largest US onshore crude oil leak in nearly a decade, and the largest by far in the accident-prone Keystone Pipeline system’s history, approximately 14,000 barrels, or 600,000 gallons–nearly an Olympic-sized swimming pool’s worth–of crude tar sands oil spewed last week from the Keystone 1 pipeline onto surrounding land and into Mill Creek, just north of Washington, Kansas.

Mill Creek flows into the Little Blue River, which in turn drains into the Big Blue River, which then runs into the Tuttle Creek Reservoir before draining into the Kansas River.

“Over [158,000 square kilometers] of watershed in Kansas, southern Nebraska, and eastern Colorado drain to the Kansas River, the drinking water source for over 800,000 Kansans and a vital natural resource,” the local environmental group Friends of the Kaw said in a statement.

“This area includes the creek, rivers, and reservoir potentially impacted by this Keystone pipeline spill. While Washington County is seemingly far away from the Kansas River, disasters like this one illustrate how connected the people and places in our watershed truly are,” the group added.

TC Energy, the operating company based in Calgary, Canada, claimed this weekend that it has “contained” the spill and “continues to progress in our response” to the accident. The firm also said it is working with federal, state, and tribal agencies to cope with the accident.

“We appreciate the patience and collaboration of the surrounding community and partner agencies for their support in responding to this incident,” the company added. “We recognize this is concerning to the community and commit that we will continue our response until we have fully remediated the site.”

The firm states that the cause of the current accident has yet to be determined.

While the Environmental Protection Agency issued a statement over the weekend claiming that “the discharge has been contained, and no drinking water has been impacted,” environmentalists note that this is the third major oil spill from this same pipeline and warn that more can be expected.

Sierra Club Beyond Dirty Fuels Director Catherine Collentine stated: “This is not the first time this pipeline has spilled and unfortunately we know all too well that it won’t be the last. We’ve always said it’s not a question of whether a pipeline will spill, but when, and once again TC Energy has made our case for us. There is no such thing as a safe tar sands pipeline and this is another disaster that continues to prove we must put our climate and our communities first.”

No timeline has been established for restarting the flow of crude oil through the pipeline.

The Keystone 1 pipeline—which carries an estimated 720,000 barrels of Canadian tar sands oil per day—is a separate conduit from the proposed Keystone XL extension which was defeated by indigenous, environmental, and progressive activism.

Originally published at Common Dreams. Republished by cc by-sa 3.0. Edits for style and content.

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