Street roots., December 02, 2016, Page 8, Image 8

News
Page 8
Reconnaissance
(continued from page 5)
iggins was living in Corvallis when he
retired from state government in 2010.
He had spent much of his career
transferring burdensome government
application processes, such as filling out
unemployment applications and registering to
vote, to online platforms.
He said he always felt he was working
toward the “greater good”
but began to re-evaluate if he
had made enough of an
impact with his life’s work
after his father died.
At the end of his life, his
father “didn’t have any sense
of contribution,” Higgins
said.
He didn’t want to have
that feeling on his own
deathbed.
In 2012, he founded the
Corvallis chapter of 350.org
and has been actively
fighting climate change ever
since.
As the climate situation
has worsened, his
After closing the
involvement in the movement has been
valve, Higgins
chained and locked increasingly brazen. In December 2013, he
was arrested for blocking the transportation
it in the off
position.
of tar sands extraction equipment through
Umatilla when he and another activist locked
P H O TO CO URTESY OF
themselves to trucks carrying the mega-load.
C L IM A TE DIRECT
A C T IO N
Their action was part of a larger protest and
plea from tribes of the Umatilla, Yakama,
Warm Springs and Nez Perce to keep the
more than 900,000-pound caravan from
moving across their tribal lands.
At age 61, it was the first time in his life
that he had been arrested.
The following year, he traveled to New York
for the People’s Climate March, and later he
moved to Coos Bay, where he would stay for
four months to fight the proposed liquefied
natural gas export terminal that was
eventually rejected by federal regulators.
In May of this year, he was arrested with 51
other protesters for blocking railroad tracks
H
Street Roots •
leading to oil refineries in Anacortes, Wash.
When the opportunity arose to shut down a
pipeline, he didn’t think twice.
These days, he splits his time between his
hometown of Eugene and his girlfriend’s
house in Southeast Portland, but planning the
pipeline shutdown required three road trips
spanning two weeks over the summer months.
With little accessible information on
pipeline routes, he had to get creative.
Federal regulations require that when a
pipeline crosses beneath a highway, both sides
of the road have to be clearly marked, he said.
He said he also knew that if it ran beneath a
body of water that was at least 100 feet across,
there must be a block valve on either side of it
so that the pipeline can be shut off in the case
of emergency.
“It was a matter of driving down miles of
country roads, spotting these markers,” he
said. “In some cases we just had to track along
the route of the pipeline until we found one of
those block valve enclosures. Part of what we
knew was that the risk for spill was greater
closer to the pumping station, so we looked
for block valves at least 10 miles from the
pumping station.”
He discovered each company’s block valves
were manufactured to different specifications,
with different shutdown instructions.
They even met with a former pipeline safety
inspector to discuss safety measures.
“That’s where we came upon the idea to
ask the companies to run their own protocol,”
Higgins said. “The truth is, both the
maintenance of the pipelines and the practice
of the protocols do not meet the federal
regulations. Enbridge, for instance, had 800
spills in previous years.”
Between 1999 and 2010, the Polaris
Institute determined 804 spills occurred on
Enbridge-owned pipelines. Additionally, the
institute reported TransCanada was
responsible for 152 spills from 2010 to 2015.
A full business day passed before any of the
pipelines were turned back on, the Valve
Turners said.
“The pipeline companies are basing their
complaint on the value of the interruption in
the flow of oil,” Higgins said. “They also
publicly said there was no actual stoppage in
the delivery of oil because of the storage
Dec. 2-8, 2016
When a
pipeline
crosses
beneath a
highway,
both sides
o f the road
have to be
marked,
and when
it runs
beneath a
body o f
water at
least 100
feet across,
there m ust
be a block
valve.
P H O T O CO U R TES Y O F C L IM A T E DIRECT A C T IO N
facilities, which is both sad and undermines
their complaint about the amount of the
damage.”
Although no one was hurt and no oil was
spilled, industry experts and pipeline
companies have released statements saying
the Valve Turners’ actions could have caused
significant harm.
The director of Pipeline Safety Trust, a
Canadian industry watchdog, told Reuters,
“Closing valves on major pipelines can have
unexpected consequences, endangering
people and the environment We do not
support this type of action.”
Higgins said the last thing his group wanted
to do was cause a spill, but “we felt that the
risk we took doing this is so much less than
the risk of doing nothing in the face of the
emergency that confronts us.”
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