Landowners' Radio Ad Exposes Dangers of CO2 Pipelines with 911 Call from 2020 Explosion

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Oct. 3, 2022

Contact:
Mark Hefflinger, Bold Alliance, mark@boldalliance.org 

Landowners' Radio Ad Exposes Dangers of CO2 Pipelines with 911 Call from 2020 Explosion

Chilling audio exposes carbon pipeline dangers to human life, livestock, as well as CO2’s ability to stall vehicles, endanger first responders

Hastings, NE— The Nebraska Easement ActionTeam, a landowners’ groups in Nebraska that vehemently opposes the use of eminent domain for private gain to seize their property for proposed carbon (CO2) pipeline projects, on Monday released a radio ad campaign that uses actual 911 recordings from a 2020 carbon pipeline rupture in Satartia, MS to highlight the serious dangers to human life – including to first responders –  posed by an explosive release of toxic CO2 by these highly-pressurized pipelines.

In the radio ad – that will launch across rural markets in Nebraska and other Midwest states where the proposed pipelines are routed – the narrator describes what happened during the 2020 incident in Satartia, MS where a carbon pipeline operated by Denbury Resources ruptured, causing an explosive release of carbon in an immense plume, which was later found by a government-issued report to be toxic for more than a mile from the site of the accident, which was caused by a girth weld failure following a landslide after heavy rain.

The ad then cuts to a 911 recording from a victim who is very concerned and confused about what is happening after her car has stalled – a direct result of the high CO2 concentration making the combustion engine nonfunctional – and her friend is having what she believes is a seizure.

The 911 recording was used with permission from journalist Dan Zegart, who obtained it via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in the course of his extensive reporting on the pipeline accident for his article, “The Gassing of Satartia,” for HuffPost: 

(https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gassing-satartia-mississippi-co2-pipeline_n_60ddea9fe4b0ddef8b0ddc8f)

“Since the first correspondence from Navigator, I feel that my family and family farm of almost a century, is being used as collateral damage. The pipeline company and their investors are using this unproven and hazardous idea as a tax scam and will try to take our land for their own private gain. The safety questions go unanswered by the pipelines’ representatives, but they continue to state their pipelines are going to be “different” than the one that exploded in Satartia. The farmer and landowner takes all the risk – including the risk of explosion and death of all living beings in the path of the plume,” said Shelli Meyer, Nebraska Easement Action Team member and landowner in Dixon County, Nebraska.

The Nebraska Easement Action Team is growing its number of landowner members daily, holding regular meetings to inform landowners about the pipeline projects and the landowners’ legal co-op. Attorneys with Omaha-based Domina Law Group are currently defending Easement Team-affiliated landowners in court who have refused to allow pipeline surveyors onto their property.

In addition to radio ads, landowners with the Nebraska Easement Action Team have raised funds to purchase billboards along the proposed pipeline routes. 

Online version of the radio ad:
https://youtu.be/14bdGO1Yfrs 

Nebraska Easement Action Team (NEAT)
https://nebraskaeasement.org 

Easement Action Teams LLC 
https://easementllc.org