WASHINGTON COUNTY, Kansas — It’s been almost two months since the Keystone pipeline erupted on a December night and crude oil rained down upon several acres of native prairie and cropland, and coated more than three miles of Mill Creek in a toxic sheen.
Canadian company TC Energy says it has cleaned nearly 90% of the oil that spilled here, near the Nebraska border.
Today, the feelings of residents toward the company vary.
Some see the Keystone as an economic lifeline for a rural county with a limited tax base. Some feel confident that TC Energy will do right by the county and its landowners.
Much of the oil landed on the Pannbacker farm.
“I don’t think either of us were prepared for the emotion of this,” Chris Pannbacker said. “Some days we’re good and some days, we’re just kind of mad. It’s hard to explain, because some people say ‘It’s just grass,’ or ‘It’s just a pasture,’ or ‘It’s just a creek.’”
She and her husband, Bill, take a four-wheel drive pickup to the top of a ridge on their farm to view the vast cleanup site on the hillside and in the valley below.
At night, the scene gives off a glow visible for miles around, as workers toil round the clock.
What was farmland belonging to their neighbor now looks like massive parking lots where trucks, bulldozers and backhoes maneuver.
Trees, torn down by the cleanup crews, lay in huge piles. Topsoil and bluestem grasses have been stripped from part of the ridge that the Pannbackers so cherish — a spot for sentimental family moments, picnics and class gatherings going back decades.
“It holds a lot of significance family-wise,” Bill Pannbacker said, “because it’s a beautiful scene. I mean, you can see 15 miles in most every direction.”
Bill doubts his family will graze cattle here for three or five years.
Keystone’s worst spill yet
When TC Energy realized that the Keystone — its biggest single oil pipeline system — had burst open, Randy Hubbard may have been the first local in Washington County to find out.
“My cellphone rang about 1:30 in the morning,” said Hubbard, the county emergency preparedness coordinator. “It was a gentleman out of Texas … with TC Energy. And he said, ‘Sorry to wake you up this early, but I think we have a significant oil release within your county.’”
