TransCanada is wasting money. Instead of buying ads and mounting telephone campaigns, it should use those dollars to do the right thing: move the pipeline route. It shouldn't run oil mixed with chemicals through one of the world's largest freshwater sources, the Ogallala Aquifer. TransCanada should run the oil somewhere else.

TransCanada's ads and phone calls tell Nebraska citizens one thing: TransCanada is worried. Nebraska citizens are apparently a lot smarter than the company had supposed. The citizens of Nebraska know life depends on water, not oil. They know that cleaning a vast underground water supply is a lot harder than cleaning oil in the ocean, because you can see the oil in the ocean. They know that steel pipes sunk in water are going to corrode and leak.

TransCanada is not a good neighbor. Threatening land owners with eminent domain even before the Keystone Pipeline is approved shows TransCanada's scheme. Get the landowners to sell, and then it's a done deal. So what if a third of American agriculture will be at risk?

The tradeoff is not dirty Canadian oil vs. dirty Middle East oil. It's oil vs. drinking water. And it's a tradeoff that need never happen.