With A LOT of help from our Friends, we successfully defeated an attempt to reactivate the long-dormant Tennessee Pass rail line without any environmental review. But the Uinta Basin Railway in Utah remains on track for approval. If constructed, the UBR will maximize shipments of dirty tar sands oil through Colorado.
While the Tennessee Pass line through Browns Canyon National Monument is not currently on the table, the Texas-based Rio Grande Pacific Corp. maintains a controlling interest in both rail lines.
The Surface Transportation Board has issued its environmental impact statement for the new UBR line, which would connect heavy crude from Utah’s tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries. This would allow exponential increases in Utah petroleum production, along with major increases in regional air pollution and U.S. climate-change emissions.
Our Friends at the Center for Biological Diversity are spearheading this effort, and they’re making it easy to contact Senators Bennet and Hickenlooper to tell them you don’t want millions of barrels of dirty crude oil crossing Colorado every year. Tell them the Forest Service must deny a right-of-way through wilderness-quality lands in Utah to prevent a carbon catastrophe for Colorado and beyond.
Thank for helping us protect Browns Canyon!
