Don’t expect local protests of the Keystone pipeline spill. Folks around tiny Amherst think that 5,000 barrels of toxic tar sands oil and solvents spilled on CRP land is just a little excitement:
Amherst resident Darrell Vander Vorst was working at Full Circle Ag Thursday morning when he and many locals noticed an oil smell.
“The guy who drives the school bus stopped here and asked if there was an oil leak around here. I said, ‘no I think it’s the manure they’ve been spreading around here lately’,” Vander Vorst said Thursday afternoon.
Vander Vorst isn’t concerned about the pipeline leak.
“It’s about the most excitement you can get in this little town,” he said [Shannon Marvel, “Keystone Pipeline Leaks 210,000 Gallons of Oil in Marshall County,” Aberdeen American News, 2017.11.17].
I’ll admit, I have a hard time telling the different between what TransCanada sells and horsehockey myself.
Allen Krutsinger lives about 3 miles away from the site of the spill.
“You know that’s part of the process, it ain’t been in the ground very long, but things happen,” Krutsinger said by phone. “I don’t think it’s going to be no big deal.”
…”It’s better to have pipelines than to have (oil) transported on public highways and railroads…. It’s one evil to another evil, you know” [Marvel, 2017.11.17].
Again, the false dilemma, assuming this oil has to be pumped, shipped, and burned in the first place. Conservation—driving less, driving less fast, requiring more fuel-efficient vehicles and other equipment—could remove the need to put Marshall County and the rest of South Dakota at risk of any more oil spills by pipeline or rail.
By the way, Marvel reports that TransCanada has shut down public roads around the spill site out to a two-mile radius. Interesting that we allow a foreign corporation to restrict access twice as far out (and over four times as much land) as we allow the Governor to restrict public access when he declares an emergency.
Hey, if they spill enough oil in Marshall County, they can start a tar sands oil mining operation right there. I think we should extract our own spilled oil right here in SD rather than rely on Canadian oil. Make South Dakota Great Again!
There’s another bright side to this. Now that they have this spill of 5000 barrels out of the way, we are protected for the next 39 years from another spill of this magnitude according to TransCanada. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the pristine environment for another 39 years!
Something sure as shooting is being spread. I guess 5ooo barrels of the worst, most toxic crud to ever spill on CRP land will just about guarantee that land will stay CRP. It may never be usable as cropland again. Not sure I’d want to graze it or hunt pheasants that hatch out there, if they ever do. But then I am from iowa.
Yet again we see another problem on this pipeline. I was present for the hearings in Pierre when South Dakota officials approved this pipeline, and I heard the assurances from the Canadian company that wanted to build the pipeline as well as from South Dakota political and business leaders that this would be a safe enterprise. Leaks, said pipeline promoters, would be extremely rare or non-existent. And they would be minor, if they occurred at all. It’s all in the public record. But exposing those deceits and misleading assurances is worthless unless we learn something from them. Why do we continue to prefer believing the bottom-line focused corporations when it comes to issues like pipelines, gold mines and oil refineries? Our regulators and political leadership make the same mistakes over and over and over. They want so desperately to believe that the private sector speaks the truth in these potentially dangerous matters. They want to believe that the gold mine won’t pollute the creek or the pipeline won’t ever leak. And then the creek is polluted and the pipeline spills oil. The “environmental extremists” who warned about the inevitability of these things continue to be ignored.
Darin may be onto something. When there’s a spill, instead of spending all that money on emergency response teams, just let the locals grab their buckets, gather up all the oil they can, and sell it back to TransCanada, or refine and use it themselves! Finders keepers, right?
Anyone going hunting on that CRP land this weekend?
I expect there are folks around there who have a different perspective than Mr. Vander Vorst, or soon will have. People usually have pride in their local area, and don’t appreciate some slick operator trashing it. Often it takes some folks a little personal experience of being taken as a rube and lied to by these slick corporate operators. The blowback is coming.
I’m not sure I buy all the so-called evidence about the risks of pipelines versus overland transport. It seems to me the risks are just redistributed to the rural environment and rural communities, as opposed to having to run through larger cities. It’s the same argument for sticking nuclear waste in South Dakota. No one lives there. I guess you guys are
…no one.
Be a colossal job of restoring CRP ground back to suitable CRP ground to provide a healthy habitat for ground nesting birds and animals.
Who is footing the bill since dilbit is not considered crude oil and is not subject to cleanup fund tax?
I’d like to throw my two pence in as well.
Wasn’t some nasty free enterprise opposing Lib-tard trying to get this state to charge these poor oil people a couple of penny’s a barrel to build a contingency fund? Way back when they were talking of building this pipeline. Seems like the interest on the moneys collected would have gone a long way toward fixing this states constant budget battle and the fund itself would have helped out on the problems that our citizens have had with this company. Of course the cry from our political leadership was loud and effective that “Free” enterprise must be allowed to do as they please.
The land owners that have had “eminent domain” shoved down there throats are the ones I really feel sorry for. The concept of “eminent domain” is to benefit the majority of the citizens. The main argument in Nebraska against the Keystone XL that South Dakota couldn’t rubber stamp fast enough is that we are giving “eminent domain” to a FOREIGN company to build a pipeline across our country to transport FOREIGN oil to be sold to FOREIGN buyers. Benefits to any citizens of this country are almost nil.
Good grief. Most of our nuclear waste is kept at the power plants, in proximity to the populations that they serve. Therefore, non-rural locations have been continuously approved for the above-ground storage of nuclear waste.
What is desired is a lack of water. If underground infrastructure does fail (either due to natural or man-made activity), then a pathway for the escape of radioisotopes is cut off. That is called defense-in-depth.
Fascinating the “meh, oh well,” attitude by locals…I think as I shake my head.