Spring/Summer 2000 One Year Later

Spring/Summer 2000 - One Year Later

Last Word
by Skye Thompson

Pipelines surge under the skin of our nation’s soil in 2 million miles of complex, overlapping grids. They run through neighborhoods, schoolyards and city parks. As these pipes age they become unsafe.

Many believe the deaths of Liam, Stephen and Wade are instances of legislative failure, the failure of federal law to keep our community safe. They blame Olympic Pipe Line and federal legislators alike, saying lax pipeline standards and corporate profit-seeking killed three of Bellingham’s sons.

Certainly, pipeline safety should be considerably better than it is, but Olympic Pipe Line is just a cog in the wheel. Blaming them is like blaming the messenger for the message.

Pipelines exist for a single purpose, to cater to consumer’s economic demand for oil products. Who sets the level of oil in Olympic’s pipeline? Consumers. You. Me. Anyone who drives a car and buys gas. Anyone that buys food or any other good shipped on roads or rails. In fact anyone who flies out of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport consumes what Olympic serves. And so, the Bellingham pipeline explosion is a symptom of a larger societal problem. America’s materialistic lifestyle is the turn-crank standing behind the machine.

Olympic’s pipeline is actually our pipeline. Wade and Stephen and Liam’s deaths are actually ours to bear.

Spring/Summer 2000 - One Year Later

Last Word by Skye Thompson

Last Word
by Skye Thompson