As part of the mandated process for reviewing the potential environment effects of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, the U.S. State Department was required to request and review public comments on the supplemental environmental impact statement for the 36-inch conduit's northern route.

If built, the pipeline will carry more than 800,000 barrels a day of diluted bitumen, a petroleum product being extracted from the Alberta tar sands deposits combined with chemicals that allow it to flow under pressure. Destination: Texas gulf coast refineries. Little about the pipeline and the mining of the tar sands themselves is without controversy and opposition, from the impact on boreal forests to the impact on that thin skin around the planet we call the atmosphere.

Public comments are a mandated procedure for any major projects that could cause harm to the environment. But it's rare for one to get so many responses. According to the department, it received 1.2 million of them in the 45-day period allowed. Some of these were generated with a 10-day blogathon here at Daily Kos.

Not all the public comments have been posted yet, and it's unclear when they will be. But as a consequence of the lobbying efforts for transparency by various interested parties—including the Pulitzer prize-winning InsideClimateNews website—you can take a look at the comments that have been posted here. John H. Cushman, Jr. at Inside Climate has done just that. Many comments are form letters signed by hundreds or thousands of members of organized groups, such as the Sierra Club. But, as Cushman discovered, there were unique individual voices as well:



Stu Luttich of Geneva, Neb. is just one of the thousands of ordinary Americans who sat down in early March and gave the State Department their two cents worth on the Keystone XL pipeline. [...] "The new route does not avoid fragile soils or ecosystems," Luttich wrote. "Breaking aboriginal prairie sod is basically a one-time event, and, will require centuries, if not millennia, to be completely restored to the original unbroken condition. This fact was not even addressed, nor questioned, in any of the Environmental Impact Statements. TransCanada Ltd. simply stated their intentions to restore the land to as it once was; but, they will not, because they can not. The capability and understanding for doing so does not yet exist. When the plow enters the sod, what is turned asunder is what has required multiple thousands of years to create. It is analogous to trying to put the proverbial 'Humpty-Dumpy back together again'; and, we simply lack the technical ingenuity, skills and understandings to accomplish the task within the context of the lifetimes of those living. "Yes, we can, and, likely will, make a feeble restoration effort," he added, "but, what results will not be the same as once was ... That chapter is over!"

Luttich's views and those of the other public commenters won't be the only ones listened to, of course. The majority in Congress, including many Democrats, the majority of Americans (according to some polls), unions representing construction workers and some other industries, the Canadian government, and, of course, the oil oligarchs have all been pitching their case for getting the pipeline built.

Because Keystone XL would cross an international boundary, the approval is up to President Obama. Most observers, including people who have been arrested for civil disobedience directed at stopping the pipeline, believe that he will say yes. That would be a very bad decision, the worst environmental choice of his presidency. And that being the case, despite the pessimism, there is still a smidgen of activist hope that voices like Mr. Luttich's will win out.