page_title: Ogallala Aquifer
section_title: Proposed Keystone XL Pipeline
hierarchical_section_title: Ogallala Aquifer / Environmental controversies / Proposed Keystone XL Pipeline
caption_attribution_description: English: A map showing aquifer thickness of the Ogallala Aquifer with the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline route laid over.
context_page_description: The Ogallala Aquifer is a shallow water table aquifer surrounded by sand, silt, clay, and gravel located beneath the Great Plains in the United States. One of the world's largest aquifers, it underlies an area of approximately 174,000 sq mi in portions of eight states. It was named in 1898 by geologist N. H. Darton from its type locality near the town of Ogallala, Nebraska. The aquifer is part of the High Plains Aquifer System, and rests on the Ogallala Formation, which is the principal geologic unit underlying 80% of the High Plains.
  Large scale extraction for agricultural purposes started after World War II due partially to center pivot irrigation and to the adaptation of automotive engines for groundwater wells. Today about 27% of the irrigated land in the entire United States lies over the aquifer, which yields about 30% of the ground water used for irrigation in the United States. The aquifer is at risk for over-extraction and pollution. Since 1950, agricultural irrigation has reduced the saturated volume of the aquifer by an estimated 9%. Once depleted, the aquifer will take over 6,000 years to replenish naturally through rainfall.
context_section_description: In 2008, TransCanada Corporation proposed the construction of the 1,661-mile (2,673 km) Keystone XL pipeline to carry oil from the Athabasca oil sands of Alberta to refineries near Houston, Texas.
  The proposed route of the pipeline crosses the eastern part of the Nebraska Sandhills; opponents of the route cite the risk to the Ogallala Aquifer posed by the possibility of contamination from spilled dilute bitumen.
  Pipeline industry spokesmen have noted that thousands of miles of existing pipelines carrying crude oil and refined liquid hydrocarbons have crossed over the Ogallala Aquifer for years, in southeast Wyoming, eastern Colorado and New Mexico, western Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. The Pioneer crude oil pipeline crosses east-west across Nebraska, and the Pony Express pipeline, which crosses the Ogallala Aquifer in Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas, was being converted as of 2013 from natural gas to crude oil, under a permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
  As the lead agency in the transboundary pipeline project, the U.S. State Department commissioned an environmental-impact assessment as required by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. The Environmental Impact Statement concluded that the project posed little threat of "adverse environmental impacts", the report was drafted by Cardno Entrix, a company that assisted both the Department of State and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in preparing environmental impact statements for other proposed TransCanada  projects. Although it is "common for companies applying to build government projects to be involved in assigning and paying for the impact analysis", several opponents of the project suggested there could be a conflict of interest.  In response to that concern, the Department of State's Office of the Inspector General conducted an investigation of the potential conflict of interest.   The February 2012 report of that investigation states no conflict of interest existed  either in the selection of the contractor or in the preparation of the environmental impact statement.
  U.S. President Barack Obama "initially rejected the Keystone XL pipeline in January 2012, saying he wanted more time for an environmental review." On February 17, 2013, a rally at the National Mall drew an estimated 40,000 in protest of Keystone XL. In January 2014, the U.S. State Department released its Keystone pipeline Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone XL Project Executive Summary, which concluded that, according to models, a large crude oil spill from the pipeline that reached the Ogallala could spread as far as 1,214 feet (370 m), with dissolved components spreading as much as 1,050 ft (320 m) further.
caption: A map showing aquifer thickness of the Ogallala Aquifer with the proposed Keystone XL pipeline route laid over.
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