I wish to commend The Gazette for its early reporting on a proposed pipeline that would run through 17 Iowa counties in a diagonal line stretching from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota to connect with a pipeline in Illinois, cutting a swath from the northwest corner of the state to the southeast corner.

I am especially appreciative of their extensive quote by Sen. Tom Harkin that even as this proposal needs serious scrutiny in light of the corrosive and volatile nature of the oil, we should as a nation be moving away from fossil fuels and utilizing the technology available to us in the form of wind and solar and electric vehicles.

As he said so simply, “We have to reduce our carbon footprint. The cheapest barrel of oil still is the barrel that you don’t burn.”

Let’s not invest in old technology that further contributes to global warming when the new technology is becoming better and less expensive and is certainly safer.

How many farms would be impacted, how many roads and rivers crossed? Too many.

Who will benefit from this? A company in Dallas.

Who takes the risks? All of us, especially those whose land would be crossed.

How is it that your land could be taken by eminent domain and yet you might be responsible if there were a leak?

Iowa citizens need to become informed about this and learn from our neighboring state of Nebraska about how and why to be pipeline fighters.

Barbara Schlachter

Iowa City