You may recall that, last November, our old friend the Keystone XL pipeline, the continent-spanning death funnel and longtime conservative fetish object, sprang a particularly ill-timed leak, drowning a field on the border between the two Dakotas with 210,000 gallons of the world’s dirtiest carbon fuel. This happened just as the officials in Nebraska were deciding that, yes, it was OK with them if TransCanada ran its death funnel through that state, and perilously close to the Oglalla Aquifer. As I said, very bad timing all around.

Now, though, we discover through our reading of the Bismarck Tribune, that the leak may have been caused because the Kanadian Katzenjammers had a really bad idea.

A report said the pipeline rupture may have been caused by a half-moon-shaped concrete weight placed on the 30-inch pipeline to hold it in place in the field near Amherst in northeast South Dakota where there was shallow groundwater. The report from TransCanada and the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration “indicates the failure may have been caused by mechanical damage to the pipeline and coating associated with a weight installed on the pipeline in 2008.” The report said weights or collars are placed on the pipeline in areas where shallow groundwater could potentially result in “buoyancy concerns.”

In other words, the pipeline usually is heavy enough to sink below the groundwater—which sounds like an altogether splendid idea in and of itself—but, when there’s too much groundwater, they weigh it down with concrete that eventually breaks the pipeline that is, you know, below the groundwater.

I’m sure the Department of the Interior, a wholly owned subsidiary of Gargantua Energy LLC, will get right on this problem.

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

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