Kaine Criticizes Allen’s Irresponsible Pipeline Stance 24JAN12

george allen continues to offers reasons why he should not be elected to the Senate. Check this out and click the header to go to Tim Kaine's campaign website for more on his positions on the economy, education, the environment....

Today: Allen told Virginians he would greenlight a pipeline through the Commonwealth without review
Richmond, VA - In a conference call today, Gov. Tim Kaine criticized Republican candidate George Allen for refusing to apply his own standard of safety in energy projects to the Keystone pipeline project. When it comes to uranium mining  in Virginia, Allen says we should wait for a thorough review because "while jobs are important, so is public health and safety." But when it comes to the Keystone pipeline, George Allen and his oil company allies are pushing for approval before a thorough review can be completed. In addition to pointing out Allen's contradictory position, Kaine criticized Allen for saying that he would not require a review or study of any oil or natural gas pipelines through Virginia. Allen made his comments on WINA 1070 in Charlottesville as part of his continuing push for approval of the Keystone pipeline —an effort Allen has pushed since before the affected states had performed their own reviews.
Key quotes from Governor Kaine from today’s call are below:
“In discussions with George at the debate and since, I’ve been surprised to see how adamantly he has been lobbying to build the Keystone pipeline before the full federal review is completed, thereby refusing to apply his own standards of safety and review to the pipeline project.
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“George Allen said, if Virginia were considering  a natural gas or oil pipeline through the Commonwealth we wouldn’t need to do any review or study it, wouldn’t need to review its effects on homeowners or communities because we’ve built other pipelines before. That’s a position that’s really ridiculous. The notion that we can just approve things, without study, that would affect homeowners and the local community is flat wrong.
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“There’s a reason that we do these reviews. Reviews help you get it right. I think this is a project that may well be the right thing to do, but until the review is complete, we don’t know the answer. We don’t know whether and how it should be done and hopefully the review will point that out. His decision to jump over the review process and say ‘we can do it anyway because it’s popular with the oil companies, who cares about what the citizens of Nebraska think about the routing of the pipeline,’ that’s irresponsible.  I’m not going to let any Senator from Nebraska put some pipeline through Virginia and just casually opine upon it because it doesn’t affect their own real estate. If I am representing Virginia I’m going to make sure that projects like this get a review and I’m not letting other Senators from other states just dictate what should be done.”

Earlier today on Charlottesville radio station 1070 WINA, George Allen said:

Host Question: Now it’s for the average person, I understand, I understand the differences, but for the average person who kinda just, you know, on, just pays attention a little bit and gets the superfluous kinda information, what we hear in the last few minutes, the President and his administration says we need time to study the pipeline to make sure that its safe, to make sure we have the safety, the safe guards in place, but then with this other one, we say we need more time to make sure uranium mining is legislated properly and regulated properly in Virginia, both have been studied for years, both could create tons of jobs, what is the real difference?
George Allen: Well there’s a big difference, in that there are pipeline, again, throughout Virginia, and throughout Nebraska, and throughout the plains, so that, the pipeline issue has been studied for three years, the uranium mining issue, there’s been a moratorium in Virginia for years, and with a moratorium naturally there’s no studies, the National Academy of Sciences has just issued their report just last month, and, and, we don’t have any regulations, if this were an issue, I guarantee you, if there were an issue, gosh we’d put a natural gas pipeline, or should be put an oil pipeline through Virginia, it wouldn’t be worrying about gosh, let's have a study, let's determine the danger of this, this is something that is already done, it is fairly routine, uranium mining is unprecedented in Virginia, and obviously radioactive waste is a much greater environmental concern than, than is oil, or natural gas, not that you’d want to have an oil spill, that’s, that’s, harmful, but it's not highly radioactive, it’s why there is such high regulations, because of these potential dangers. So they are not at all comparable, in that again, oil pipelines are throughout Virginia and throughout the country, uranium mining is an issue of first impression, that's really science, Academy of Sciences report came out late last year, and so, I think Virginia’s taking the appropriate approach, if Virginia were trying to hold up a gas pipeline, or oil pipeline, it simply wouldn’t happen, because we have them.