Republican Sen. Mike Johanns of Nebraska is ramping up his objections to the planned path for the $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline, calling on the Obama administration to consider alternative routes for the project that would bypass his state's environmentally sensitive Sandhills region.

In a letter sent yesterday to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Johanns said he was "troubled" by the extent of consideration given to alternative pipeline routes in the draft environmental impact statement (EIS) that Clinton's department released six months ago. Johanns' primary concern is the potential for damage to the Sandhills, where water from the delicate soil makes up an estimated three-quarters of Nebraskans' drinking supply.

"The character of these soils might be environmentally significant in the context of the" draft EIS, Johanns wrote, asking Clinton to consider the prospective "environmental benefit to a route that avoids the Sandhills region" in finalizing the State Department's pipeline assessment.

Environmental advocates as well as some local landowners in the six states potentially affected by Keystone XL are waging a broad public campaign to beat back the pipeline, which would carry carbon-intensive Canadian oil sands 1,700 miles south to Gulf Coast refineries. The conservative Johanns' focus on ecological risks posed by the pipeline route have made him an unexpected ally of groups that warn of heightened pollution and deforestation as a result of oil sands production (Greenwire, Oct. 1).

The State Department is expected to rule by early next year on the application by Calgary, Alberta-based TransCanada for a presidential permit to build Keystone XL across the northern U.S. border. Johanns also asked Clinton to evaluate the environmental impact of changing the pipeline's current border crossing away from the currently slated site of Morgan, Mont.

"It would be of considerable concern to me if U.S. consideration of the potential routes within our country for a proposed pipeline have been limited by the terms of a permit previously issued by another country," he wrote.

Click here to read Johanns' letter to Clinton.