A Protest against the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines (Wikimedia Commons)

Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines had their worst fears confirmed on Thursday, Nov. 16, as the Keystone pipeline, which runs from Canada through much of the Midwest, leaked at least 210,000 gallons of oil. This might be an underestimate and the type of oil that Keystone transports, called Bitumen, is one of the most damaging in the world. The leak took place near Marshall County, South Dakota—about 30 miles west of the Lake Traverse Reservation.

This is not the first spill from Keystone, and it is not likely to be the last. In April 2016, TransCanada acknowledged that the Keystone pipeline leaked at least 17,000 gallons of oil. The spill detection system that TransCanada installed on the pipeline did not detect the 2016 spill. Instead, a passerby noticed the spill. If you have to rely on a Good Samaritan to point out the fact that your pipeline is leaking thousands of gallons of oil, perhaps you should find a different industry. This wasn’t the first spill from Keystone either, as the above-linked article points out, “After being commissioned in 2010, it reportedly recorded 35 leaks in its first year alone, including a spill of 21,000 gallons of oil in North Dakota.”

All of these leaks (including the one on Nov. 16) are coming from the Keystone pipeline, the original pipeline onto which the oft-mentioned Keystone XL would be built. TransCanada constructed and operates the original Keystone pipeline, so not only does each additional leak have poor optics, it also brings additional merit to the claim that the proposed Keystone XL pipeline would not be as environmentally safe and advanced as TransCanada would lead us to believe. This leak acts as further confirmation of the environmental concerns raised by protestors and Native American tribes across the country.

Keystone XL’s permit was up for review on Monday, November 20th, and despite this spill, Keystone XL was narrowly approved. The Keystone XL pipeline and the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL for short) both face majority disapproval among the American population, and support for both has been on a steady decline for years. Despite this, and the massive protests against these pipelines, the Trump administration authorized the construction permits for both the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines in February 2017.

Pipes for the Keystone pipeline (Wikimedia Commons)

TransCanada is responsible for Keystone XL, while Energy Transfer Partners is responsible for DAPL. It is worth noting that Rick Perry, the current Secretary of Energy, sat on the Board of Directors for Energy Transfer Partners. Conflict of interest? Fake news, I guess.

“Good for the Environment” they said. “No Downside” they said.

Both pipelines face major environmental concerns, and the dismissal of these concerns by the corporations behind them appears to be shortsighted at best, self-interested and malicious at worst. Both corporations claim that the potential for a leak is very low, but the evidence has overwhelmingly shown that leaks are not only possible, but they are common.

At the heart of the Keystone XL concerns, is the fear of water pollution. This poses a tremendous, unnecessary risk to water and wildlife. This risk is highlighted in a 2012 Washington Post Article, which notes:

“At the heart of their battle is whether the pipeline would pose a threat to the massive Ogallala Aquifer — one of the world’s largest underground sources of fresh water. By one calculation, it holds enough water to cover the country’s 48 contiguous states two feet deep.”

This aquifer acts like a sponge and provides fresh water that irrigates a large portion of the Midwest. The likelihood of contamination is high, with the 2012 Washington Post article going on to say that:

“University of Nebraska civil engineering professor John Stansbury, who drew on pipelines’ history and TransCanada regulatory filings to predict that during the projected 50-year lifespan of the pipeline, “there would be 91 leaks . . . that could potentially put 6.5 million gallons of tar sands oil in the Ogallala aquifer and essentially contaminate our drinking water.””

This pipeline poses such a significant threat, not only to the environment itself, but to the way of life for millions of people. Contaminated irrigation water would kill countless crops, and more people would go hungry as food costs inevitably increase.

The approval of Keystone XL by the Army Corps of Engineers is also questionable,

In order to make this private land seizure move at a faster pace, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with analyzing the building plans and issuing permits, uses a controversial process known as Nationwide Permit 12. The Corps, as the Seattle Times notes in November 2016, “often does not assess major pipeline projects as major pipeline projects.” In other words, the Corps, in an effort to make their job easier, separates the pipeline into many smaller sections before they analyze potential risk. Basically, they treat one large pipeline as if it were hundreds of small, independent pipeline projects. This, as the Seattle Times points out, has called into question the Corps’ interpretation of Nationwide Permit 12.

Officially, Nationwide Permit 12 states, verbatim, that it can be used for: “activities required for the construction, maintenance, repair, and removal of utility lines and associated facilities in waters of the United States, provided the activity does not result in the loss of greater than ½ -acre of waters of the United States for each single and complete project.” Critics say that it does not make logical sense to be able to call something a “single and complete project” when you are actually taking one complete project and dividing it into hundreds of smaller projects to be analyzed individually.

An essay in the Georgetown Environmental Law Review by Samantha L. Varsalona notes:

“TransCanada’s Gulf Coast Pipeline, which is the bottom half of the Keystone XL Pipeline, is 485 miles long and crosses United States waters 2,227 times, meaning the it “crosse[d] waters about once every 1150 feet.”[42] The Corps verified the Gulf Coast Pipeline under NWP 12, even though NWP 12 was used 2,227 times in the process”.

This means that the Army Corps of Engineers, in order to approve Keystone XL as quickly as possible and with as little paperwork as possible, basically pretended that they were analyzing 2,227 independent, self-operating pipelines. When weighing the environmental and ethical impacts of these pipelines, perhaps less paperwork should not be the top priority.

A protester marches against the Dakota Access Pipeline (Wikimedia Commons)

It is sadly ironic that there appears to be a recurring trend with the Native Americans and Thanksgiving. The original Thanksgiving in the 1600s was far from the tales in children’s storybooks. It coincided with a massacre of thousands of Native Americans by colonists. Over the resulting centuries, the tribes have seen their land stolen, their sacred animals killed, and their people murdered. Last Thanksgiving, protesters at the Standing Rock Reservation were speaking out against the Dakota Access pipeline. The response? Tear gas and fire hoses. One woman had her arm nearly blown off by a concussion grenade, and this week she has spoken out against the pipelines once more. This year, while people gather with their families over dinner, the tribes will continue to live in fear of the danger that these pipelines pose to their livelihood.

For the Lake Traverse Reservation, which we mentioned at the beginning of this piece, cleanup efforts may be necessary. It is clear that after centuries of injustice against Native American tribes, we as a nation and the U.S. government, in particular, owe a debt that can never be fully re-payed. These pipelines should have their permits, which may be illegal in and of themselves, immediately revoked, and the United States should move to end the overly broad use of National Permit 12. It is in the best interest of this country, and the world itself, for these pipelines to be ended where they started.

Links for further reading: