David Daniel had never been to an environmental protest before this week, but as hundreds converge in Washington for civil disobedience against a massive oil pipeline, the retired carpenter from Texas is spearheading opposition against what he calls "dirty Canadian tar sands oil".
Some 275 environmentalists have been arrested since protests began August 20 against TransCanada's proposed 2,700 km Keystone XL pipeline. Currently, TransCanada operates the Keystone line which can carry 591,000 barrels of tar sands oil to Oklahoma and Illinois.
The $7bn project aims to expand daily capacity to 1.1 million barrels of crude oil travelling from Alberta, Canada, through America's heartland, to refineries on the Gulf coast.
"For me, from day one, it has always been about safety issues," Daniel said, as he drove to Washington to rally opposition. "They are disrespecting the safety of our water supplies. They lied to me about permitting, payments and damage systems," Daniel told Al Jazeera in reference to TransCanada. "I don't want my family to be a lab rat for a foreign oil company."
The Calgary-based multinational did not respond to Al Jazeera's interview request.
Leaky lines
Although only operational for a year, the Keystone pipeline has already had 11 leaks in the US – including one that sent a geyser of oil shooting 20 meters into the air in South Dakota, spilling 79,000 liters.
"Obviously, we don't want any spills and what happened [during the BP disaster] in the Gulf [of Mexico] last year was a horrible accident and we have learned a lot from that," said Sabrina Fang, spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute, an industry lobby group.
"This pipeline will have thousands of censors. If a spill was to happen it would be detected quickly," Fang told Al Jazeera. "TransCanada is making every effort to make this the safest pipeline out there."
Supporters say the pipeline will create 20,000 jobs, while opponents fear it will will leak and expand production from the Canadian tar sands, some of the world's most environmentally destructive oil.
"With an unemployment rate of 9.2 per cent, the president has the opportunity to sign off on this shovel ready project," Fang said. "While we welcome the views of everyone, we think the rallies going on right now are rallies against jobs," she said of the ongoing protests in Washington.
Opposition to the mega-project does not cut evenly across party lines. Unions representing pipefitters and tradespeople – usually backers of Obama's Democrats support the pipeline as a "shovel ready" job creation programme. Some back-to-the land rural Republicans – including Nebraska senator Mike Johanns, have voiced concerns about the pipeline's route and possible environmental damage.
TransCanada's assessment of the project estimates less than 11 spills discharging more than 50 barrels over the pipeline's 50 year lifespan. But a recent study from John Stainsbury, professor of water resources and engineering at the University of Nebraska, finds the company underestimates possible dangers.
His independent analysis, the first on the proposed pipeline, finds that Keystone XL could spill as much as 29.9 million liters of oil above the Ogallala Aquifer and more than 26 million liters of raw tar sands crude at the Yellowstone River crossing.
