He might have star power, but the Red Headed Stranger couldn’t stop the Permian Highway Pipeline construction in the hill country around Austin, Texas.
The Houston Chronicle reported that pipeline operator Kinder Morgan moved ahead with the controversial pipeline through the region even as musicians Willie Nelson and Paul Simon came out opposing it.
The two expressed their opposition in an op-ed piece published by the Chronicle, asking the company to stop the project. It didn’t work. Nelson, known as the Red-Headed Stranger and Simon, the singer known for “Loves Me Like A Rock,” “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” “Kodachrome” and many others were not able to convince Kinder Morgan to stop construction of the $2 billion pipeline.
The line is being built to carry an estimated 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day out of the Permian Basin to the Katy Hub near Houston.
Environmentalists have fought the line and members of the Sierra Club in April had asked a federal judge to halt construction. In late April, the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit arguing that the Army Corps failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when it approved the project without first conducting the required analysis of environmental impacts, providing for public participation, or considering alternative routes.
