The Water Management Board is hearing TC Energy/TransCanada’s request for a permit to draw water for the construction of the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. At Wednesday’s hearing, TC Energy’s lawyer objected to any testimony regarding potential damage the completed Keystone XL pipeline might cause as irrelevant to a permit on water usage during construction. Board chair Jim Huttmacher denied that objection, and water defenders were allowed to discuss the dangers posed to our water supply by both construction and the thing TC Energy wants to construct.
At yesterday’s WMB session, Senator Troy Heinert (D-26/Mission) spoke to the potential damage Keystone XL may cause by pointing to the actual damage caused by the first pipeline TC built across our fair state, the Keystone 1 pipeline, which just sprayed 383,000 gallons of oil in North Dakota:
Pipeline operator TC Energy said that as of Wednesday evening, the oil had not migrated beyond the immediately affected area of about 2,500 square yards in a rural wetland area 3 miles northwest of Edinburg.
Walsh County Emergency Manager Brent Nelson said the oil initially sprayed out of the ground and spread in the area near where the leak happened.
“(It was) basically like a whale blowing out its water up into the air,” he explained. “If you see the site, you can see where it got caught in the wind and drifted over.”
…Marla Zidon, who lives just half a mile away from the spill, said she could smell oil when she got home from work Wednesday.
“It was really heavy smelling,” she said, and remembered asking herself if it was going to “blow up.”
“It’s scary — never expected anything like this to happen,” she added [Hannah Shirley and Matt Henson, “Keystone Spill in Walsh County Deemed ‘High-Impact’; Sanders Tweets Pipeline Should Never Have Been Built,” Grand Forks Herald, 2019.10.31].
Never expected anything like this to happen? Seriously? Something exactly like this happened two years ago down the pipeline in Marshall County, South Dakota, due to sloppy construction work. It happened a year and a half before that near Freeman, South Dakota, due to sloppy welding. Repeated leaks and repeated warnings from experts should have raised everyone’s expectations beyond the lowball projections TC/TransCanada used to sell its pipeline thirteen years ago:
…the estimated occurrence intervals for a spill of 50 barrels or less occurring anywhere along the entire pipeline system is once every 65 years, a spill between 50 and 1,000 barrels might occur once in 12 years; a spill of 1,000 and 10,000 barrels might occur once in 39 years; and a spill containing more than 10,000 barrels might occur once in 50 years. Applying these statistics to a 1-mile section, the chances of a larger spill (greater than 10,000 barrels) would be less than once every 67,000 years [ENSR Corporation for TransCanada, “Pipeline Risk Assessment and Environmental Consequence Analysis,” Document No. 10623-004, June 2006; quoted in CA Heidelberger, “TransCanada Keystone Leak #4: Hartington Pump Station Spews,” Madville Times, 2010.12.07].
Keystone 1 has produced two spills in two years of the quantity TransCanada said we’d see once every 39 years. TC/TransCanada has provided similarly optimistic spill projections for the pipeline it wants to lay across the western half of South Dakota:
TransCanada’s spill analysis for Keystone XL, which would cross Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, estimates 2.2 leaks per decade with half of those at volumes of 3 barrels or less. It estimated that spills exceeding 1,000 barrels would occur at a rate of once per century [Valerie Volcovici and Richard Valdmanis, “Keystone’s Existing Pipeline Spills Far More Than Predicted to Regulators,” Reuters, 2017.11.27].
It’s no wonder TC Energy/TransCanada would object to any discussion of potential damage that their projects may cause: that discussion only proves how unreliable the Canadian pipeline is when it comes to informing us about the risks we face from their shoddy construction.
Related Tweeting: Democratic Presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders promises to shut down the leaky Keystone 1:
If the Water Management Board process on water permits is similar to years ago when I was involved in contested case hearings, it does require a finding of public interest as well as a finding of water availability. That finding was put in there specifically to address the situations like this pipeline, where providing water to an operator might involve other issues that are deemed important. I’m happy Jim Hutmacher sees it the South Dakota way, and is giving the board ample flexibility to consider other issues.
Let’s consider an example. Suppose “Child Porn R Us” decided to apply for a water permit for their child porn studio southeast of Wall. Let’s assume water was available and the experts could find no reason based on water availability to turn them down. That finding of public interest would be a hurdle “Child Porn R Us” would have to deal with.
I view these spills in much the same way as I would child pornography. You might want to turn down the whole permit based on child pornography, or you might want to condition the permit to say that children may not be within 1000 feet of “Child Porn R Us,” or you might want to say that children must be fully clothed at “Child Porn R Us,” or or you might condition the permit on having a third-party inspector on site at all times.
Rarely will a state board turn down these permits, but they can have conditions that have to be met. That public interest finding gives them a powerful negotiating position, if they care to take advantage of it. Usually they don’t, but they should in this case.
Sorry Donald, we do have a choice regarding our use of oil. And right now you and I choose to drive our vehicles whenever we want.
Keeping people from making a choice will backfire. It would be better in the long term to offer a viable alternative for transportation.
The best near-term solution is to drive less and/or use more efficient vehicles.
Not following what you are saying, Dr. McT. My comment referred to the the Water Management Board, and its power regarding the water permit.
I took your analogy as the only way to stop us from using oil is to stop the pipelines. I disagreed.
In my opinion, we need a viable alternative for oil/gas in transportation, and then people will choose the better and cheaper one.
Otherwise, we will still consume oil/gas for transportation. So fewer pipeline issues occur, but then the issues with the other methods of delivery get worse.
Who is “we?” The BWM?
It’s clear TC lies about their pipelines and should not be approved for one more inch of line or drop of water.
I concur with Debbo! These pipelines need not be built around our water supplies! Why we need to discuss this is beyond me. Duh!
Donald, by “we” I mean both you and I and everyone else who drives a car.
Below is why we are discussing pipelines. Without pipelines, you will have more oil train derailments.
http://www.startribune.com/safety-officials-concerned-by-sharp-increase-in-oil-train-traffic-from-canada/505579362/
“Oil imports by rail from Canada have hit a historic high, meaning more oil trains are rolling across Minnesota and raising the alert level of local emergency managers.”
“Oil producers prefer to ship oil by pipeline. It’s by far the most cost-effective — and therefore most common — form of crude transportation. Calgary-based Enbridge now moves 2.8 million barrels per day on its six-pipeline corridor from Alberta to Superior, Wis., the largest conduit of Canadian oil into the U.S.”
Native workers not sure what’s next after coal plant closes
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/long-running-coal-plant-navajo-reservation-nears-end-66710447
“The plant was a compromise to keep more hydroelectric dams from being built through the Grand Canyon and to power a series of canals that deliver water to Arizona’s major cities, allowing them to grow. At the time, the U.S. was facing a natural gas shortage and utilities turned to coal to feed the electric grid.”
“Tourism, solar plants, a call center and manufacturing facilities could help make up lost revenue, tribal officials said, but no single venture will replace the money coal brought in.”
Couldn’t help but notice that when the Keystone pipeline got to states familiar with oil, Kansas and states south of there, that the pipeline diameter greatly increased. Of course that would mean that for the same flow the pressure would have dropped considerably. At the time I was wondering if those states knew a little more about pipeline breaks. One would expect these pipeline people to opt for the cheapest way to make a buck and the fools in the GOP up here to go along with any good ol boys in the all important oil industry.
Now the pipeline pressure is being increased to flow more oil and, of course, that is fine with the GOP regulators.
Watched another youtube vid not long ago that claimed the reason for the Keystone pipeline was to feed the Koch brothers refinery designed originally to refine the same kind of oil only from Venezuela. Once the Venezuelan oil was nationalized they could get their oil from Canada for less money.
Seem’s plausible.
koch bros (minus one) own, maybe just lease, copious amounts of tar sands in Canada and have a refinery for it near ChicAgo, somewhere.
College protesters in St. Paul aren’t very impressed with pipeline funders. From City Pages:
According to a study by the Rainforest Action Network, in the years since the Paris Climate Agreement, Chase has been the premiere banker of fossil fuel companies. At a whopping $196 billion, it tops the closest contender (Wells Fargo) by nearly 30 percent. It also backs Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands pipeline, which cuts through indigenous lands and the Mississippi River. Opponents worry a leak would be catastrophic to Native populations and the countless other communities that rely on the river.
This protest started with multiple requests for dialogue, and she’s already organized a similar demonstration in Minneapolis. But as soon as they show up, she says the bank shuts them out.
“tar sands; bloody hands,”
s.gd/K2YX6F