For many, the battle over the Keystone XL pipeline is about national energy strategy and global climate change. For residents of the Manchester neighborhood in Houston, it’s also about what will be processed and spewed into the air in their backyards.
Activist Doug Fahlbusch recently brought some attention to the community when he held up a sign at a Valero-sponsored golf tournament that said, “TAR SANDS SPILL. ANSWER MANCHESTER.” That protest got him carried away from the links by security guards and arrested.
What did Fahlbusch mean? Why are he and his colleagues at Tar Sands Blockade so concerned about Manchester?
Yes! magazine reporter Kristin Moe took a trip to the embattled neighborhood, where a refinery owned by Valero Energy Corp. could end up processing most of the tar-sands oil that flows south through the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Here is a little of what Moe found in “Houston’s most polluted neighborhood”:
TVNL Comment: Still time left to stop this. Wake up, America.