I know you'll find this hard to believe, but TransCanada, the corporate giant behind the Keystone XL pipeline, the continent-spanning death-funnel and Republican fetish object, is having a little bit of a problem with one of its other pipelines.

Oil covered a 300-square-foot area in a farm field ditch 4 miles from a Freeman-area pump station, about 40 miles southwest of Sioux Falls. It was discovered Saturday. TransCanada hasn't released the amount of oil. About 100 workers are investigating where the oil came from and removing the contaminated soil. No pipeline damage had been found as of midmorning Tuesday, company spokesman Mark Cooper said. TransCanada also said it had found no significant environmental harm.

I'll certainly take their word on that.

State officials were monitoring the cleanup, and so far TransCanada has "taken the necessary steps," said Brian Walsh, an environmental scientist with the South Dakota Department of Natural Resources.

Pipelines leak. That's what they do. Corporations either lie about it or they count your destroyed property as their cost of doing business. That's what they do.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io