The reporting has been so bad and at times just stupid[2] that the state had to setup a FAQ[3] just to combat some of the foolishness. Point 14 directly contradicts this article and pretty much shows how bad the reporting has been.
1) http://fortune.com/2017/01/21/standing-rock-sioux-pipeline/
2) There are no friggin wild buffalo roaming North Dakota - they are all on ranches, preserves, or the national park land.
3) https://ndresponse.gov/dakota-access-pipeline/myth-vs-fact
[edit]The reason this particular corridor is used is because it was initially cleared in 1982 for an existing gas pipeline. The DAPL pipeline runs parallel to that pipe. [/edit]
> Myth: Law enforcement officers deployed concussion grenades resulting in the grievous injury to a protester’s arm.
> Fact: Law enforcement has at no time used concussion grenades during protest activities. Non-lethal munitions used include: impact sponge rounds, drag stabilizer bean bag rounds, riot control CS (tear gas) canister and water, Taser, and stinger balls, which are small rubber balls and CS gas emitted from the device. It makes a loud noise and emits small rubber balls which are meant to cause people to be startled and therefore disperse. It contains no shrapnel.
That's an interesting definition of "non-lethal". "Non-lethal" in this case apparently does not mean "cannot kill the target", because bean bag rounds absolutely can be lethal when shot at someone. They're shot fast enough that they can easily damage internal organs or even fracture your skull.
There seems to be plenty of voices from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe leadership calling for continued peaceful protest.
"The tribe has been encouraging protesters to go home since the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers agreed to an environmental review of the $3.8 billion project in December."
But now, the news is that it seems the environmental review won't be needed.
Either way tell that to the communities which are having trains explode within city limits killing people. Or massive truck spills.
Thank you. I grew up on a ranch near there (about 30 minutes from where the protests are happening) and I know ranchers who have had tractors and combines (clearly not a piece of machinery involved in laying a pipeline) ruined because protestors put sugar and dirt in the gas tanks. The people out there... "protecting the water" aren't being nearly as careful as they need to be around destruction of private property. It's disgusting. Ranchers out there tend to be "family farms" / small businesses that don't have insurance for the kinds of damages the protestors are doing.
I don't know how many, but I think it was 6-7 buffalo died during the stampede. A stampede caused by protestors who cut fences and used four-wheelers to scare the buffalo into charging towards the police line. These protestors put the animals at risk -- and the news covers it as, "Oh look at the majestic spirt animals coming to the rescue!" Total BS. Buffalo... are just big dumb animals. With horns. When you scare them, they run their horns into other buffalo... anyway it's a mess. I think a few horses died too. These aren't "wild" animals, they're someone's livestock.
The fact of the matter is the protestors can't tell the difference between a local rancher, and someone who is involved with the pipeline. They block roads, and harass anyone in a pickup truck. I went home to visit and wanted to see what all the fuss was about... when we drove over there it was clear they were antagonizing anyone who came near... and a lot of people who have nothing to do with this still had to use that road. Very clear too that the protesters aren't locals.
The accounts of buffalo/bison death I find are claims by ranchers that buffalo have been stolen/slaughtered by out of state protesters and that buffalo near the protest areas have been killed after being spooked within their enclosure by loud noises that resulted from clashes between protesters and law enforcement.
I'm not finding the media bias you claim from any reputable sources.
Check post history, I've written about growing up on a ranch in a bunch of my posts here. My family ranch is near Shields, ND -- it's a few towns over from Cannon Ball.
So basically this pipe runs alongside an existing pipe? I feel like I can't trust anything I read anymore from either side.
Oil contamination will ruin a potable water supply for a long time to come, it will mix with the water and make it unusable for human, animal or plant consumption - outside of a complete drainage and refilling of the water table (hah, good one) it's just going to continue to be more and more diluted but still present until a very long period of time has passed.
This is the major fear of these pipelines, any leak could potentially do irreparable harm (in a human time frame) to a water supply - and oil pipelines have leaked before, we haven't suddenly got some new engineering magic to stop it.
http://cdm16021.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16021...
More to the point, is there a reason to trust Jo-Ellen Darcy's opinion over that of Douglas Lamont and Colonel John W. Henderson, P.E.? (It seems like of the three, the Colonel's opinion is the least likely to be politically biased and most likely to be based on engineering judgement.)
EDIT: Actually, I think I might have been overly harsh on Mr. Lamont here. He is also a PE, and was appointed in 2004, which makes me think he might not be in a political job, either. http://asacw.hqda.pentagon.mil/Lamont.aspx
The submitted title ("US Army approves Dakota Access Pipeline without required environmental review") rewrote the original when it wasn't misleading or linkbait. This breaks the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), so please don't do that.
Doing it to emphasize a contentious detail in the story is editorializing, which is particularly bad. On HN, unlike some other social news sites, submitters have no special rights over the story and don't get to frame it for everyone else. If you'd like to say what you think is important about a story you've submitted, please do so by commenting in the thread. Then you're on a level field with everyone else.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/38901498
Still has a dependency on resources from ampproject.org, though.
The correct approach would be to make fees and penalties for environmental impact higher (carbon tax, EPA able to levy big fines for oil spills, etc.) and then let the market figure it out rather than fight like crazy over specific cases.
Now, as to the subject of the pipeline running through native american territory because white people were (justifiably) worried about their drinking water if it ran through their watershed -- that's a whole different issue.
Your last argument suggests you are conflating aspects of the Dakota Access Pipeline (which is for domestic shale oil from a particular field) with the Keystone XL pipeline (which is for Canadian oil sands oil).
The environmental argument about Dakota access is that the pipeline, which was rerouted from its original route because of an unacceptable threat to a mostly White community that it would have crossed just upstream of the water supply of, and it's been rerouted to run just upstream of the water supply of the Standing Rock reservation.
Which is why the protesters style themselves "Water Protectors".
> Now, as to the subject of the pipeline running through native american territory because white people were (justifiably) worried about their drinking water if it ran through their watershed -- that's a whole different issue.
No, it's actually the whole issue with Dakota Access. Keystone XL is a whole different pipeline.
"This pipeline was moved because local communities feared the risk to the water supply. So the company felt it was appropriate to move it into the tribal community area."
"Water risk to white people? No no no. Water risk to Native communities? Well, we can live with that."
I think you are totally correct, except that the `correct approach` only works if you have a functioning and independent (of the regulated) regulatory system able to assess the impact, and levy taxes, fees, and fines to price in all the externalities.
Defunding / freezing these agencies certainly doesn't help their ability to function, and funding the campaigns of (or challengers in the primaries of if need be) the regulators as well as having sympathetic people placed at the top of the regulatory enforcement agencies destroys independence.
The stated motivation for this banning of research is because these studies are not "repeatable". This seems like a pretty blatant attack on the potential for the entities which benefited from the activity that led to the accident to be held accountable.
With a rule like this on the horizon, there's no way I'd be willing to allow any oil company to pursue any construction with any risk of an ecological effect anywhere near my back yard.
Maybe they can provide some concrete analysis of tainted water supplies.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis#Switching_t...
as to the subject of the pipeline running through native american territory... that's a whole different issue.
Power. It's about power. And power is tied to race. It's morally disgusting, and a lot of this talk is just misdirection, avoiding the real, valid source of anger and rebellion.
The pipeline runs close to, not "through tribal lands" [1]. The environmental concern is fair. If my neighbor builds a 300 dB speaker on their property, I have a reasonable claim to damages.
The "sacred lands" and threat to "way of life" claims, however, seem disingenuous. It amounts to laying claims based on hypotheticals on someone else's property.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Access_Pipeline#Tribal_...
Look at this map:
https://www.eia.gov/pub/oil_gas/natural_gas/analysis_publica...
Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana must have no drinking water by now, right?
The protest has garnered the support that it has mostly because it's a Native American community (and I for one do support them - they've been screwed over too many times in the past).
The "symbolism" is - if you're poor or under-represented you will be poisoned. Why did we even create reservations if we can poison them at will for the profits of the greedy?
You can't block supply while demand is there, because the demand will be filled by someone, only this time by someone with less oversight [from you].
You want to make a difference add more "good" supply, or reduce demand.
Bad supply will automatically go down if you do this, with no extra effort.
If the pipeline is safe, prove it. If the trains and trucks are safe, prove it. If neither, then leave the oil in the ground.
Nothing is ever perfectly safe. Nothing you do ever has no impact. Everything in life is about tradeoffs, and the right thing to do is pick the best one. NOT wait for the perfect one!
What are you suggesting, exactly? That each locality can block whatever transport goes through it? Maybe put up a tollbooth?
Coal isn't safe either, nor nuclear, hell even with solar someone might fall off a roof during maintenance or installation and the panels can be toxic. What perfectly safe energy source do you propose?
Comparing rail to pipelines, with the same amount of oil moved the same distance, trains cost 2x more and use more energy. Most years trains spill less per oil moved than pipelines, which is their one win.
Unfortunately, when trains have accidents, they tend to be both in towns and have fire. 45 people died in a single Canadain oil train accident in 2013.
Pipelines have great record in terms of human safety.
http://articles.latimes.com/2014/jan/13/nation/la-na-nn-nort...
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/north-dakota-town-evacuated-afte...
[1]: https://www.fraserinstitute.org/research/safety-transportati...
But on the other hand pipelines are more cost effective than other means of transport. That means the oil gets to market more cheaply and that will tend to decrease the price of oil, meaning more is used, meaning more CO2 in the air. Raising the price by taxing oil would mean that we would get the double benefit of less oil use and government money to pay down the debt or whatever but that's harder to do politically than just block pipelines.
Also higher prices mean more oil is exctracted - and sometimes more is used to do the extraction (IE, more marginal EROEI projects are undertaken)
You have a point about transport CO2 use but I'd expect that would use a small amount proportionally.
There are well known ocean seeps that have been ongoing for tens or hundreds of thousands of years[1]:
>Researchers have found that natural offshore seeps near Goleta, California, alone have leaked up to 25 tons of oil each day – for the last several hundred thousand years.
The problem is that when you build this infrastructure, it comes along with long-term financial contracts. Which is to say, if you build it, you're gonna use it.
As a result, it discourages investments in other energy infrastructure projects. Once the pipeline is in, we are stuck with it until it ages out of usefulness or if green energy radically undercuts the profitability of fossil fuels such that the pipeline is abandoned. But because of those long-term financial contracts, the likelihood of the pipeline being abandoned is far less than it would have been if trucks were used instead.
Small short-to-medium-term risk, larger long-term risk.
Also, remember the article from yesterday about how utilities are building solar plants to insulate themselves from swings in the price of oil and natural gas. The current round of pipeline building and the current round of solar-building are complementary; both are about moving away from coal.
Wind has arrived, solar is arriving, and geothermal and pumped hydro are probably next. The future of the world's energy supply looks pretty bright, and it looks likely that the Saudis were right back in the 1970s when they predicted that the oil age wouldn't end when we ran out of oil, just as how the stone age didn't end when we ran out of stones.
What does it mean to be safer in this context? Pipelines have fewer spills than trucks, but a truck spill is generally limited to one truck's worth of oil whereas a pipe can spill a huge amount.
Safer by what measure? Pipelines have fewer spills than trucks, but a truck spill is generally limited to one truck's worth of oil whereas a pipe can spill a huge amount. (I'm not sure where trains fit in. A train carries more oil than a truck, but train accidents won't always break every car).
The recent leak in ND was a little worse than normal because it was during a rough blizzard which made it rather difficult to respond quickly.
I agree with the rest of your comments.
source(s)?
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/research/safety-transportati...
we're in the midgame of climate change... better to take radical action to prevent the worst possible end case.
This project really doesn't have many positive externalities for its host nation. For an administration that's "America First" they're been very quiet about who actually benefits. Some few Americans do.
Eventually there's going to be less reliance on the USA for refined petrol as more nations move towards renewable energy sources, so the market will eventually correct itself I suppose - but I don't see any reason to help the oil companies make one last push to milk it for all they can before the money dries up.
In essence, pipelines spill more across fewer locations while trains spill less across more locations:
Our calculation implies 0.09 incidents and 26 barrels released per 1 billion barrel-miles of crude oil transported by pipeline during a 2004-12 period. Comparing that with figures for rail, we quantify the risk of a train incident to be 6-times higher than that of a pipeline, while pipelines spill 3-times more per 1 billion barrel-miles of crude oil transported, over the 2004-12 period.
[1] http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication...
One reason existing pipelines have a lot of problems today is because a lot of them are very old, which makes them much more dangerous than any pipeline built today. This is a good article about that: http://insideenergy.org/2014/08/01/half-century-old-pipeline...
A brand new pipeline would be less dangerous than the existing pipeline infrastructure we use today.
They already built 1,171 miles of it - do you think an environmental review is going to make a difference for the last 1 mile?
It doesn't matter if you are for or against this, the time to protest it was before they built it, not when it's basically done.
That was also the basis for the Army Corps of Engineers ordering a more extensive environmental review. My understanding is the review wasn't to determine whether the pipeline would be built at all (that question isn't even in their jurisdiction), but 1) to evaluate whether the proposed route under Lake Oahe, which requires an easement to be granted beneath a reservoir they're responsible for, is a suitable option, and 2) if yes, to determine whether conditions should be placed on the easement to minimize the likelihood and/or impact of a spill. Their press release at the time is here: http://www.usace.army.mil/Media/News-Releases/News-Release-A...
That was also the basis for the Army Corps of Engineers ordering a more extensive environmental review.
Even if the pipeline is ultimately established, winning damages for the local people would help them relocate away from resources tainted by the previous pipeline (who's legality is also very questionable).
[EDIT:] Here is the original headline: "Dakota Access Pipeline to win US Army permit for completion"
The Radio War Nerd podcast people interviewed him about his stay in the DAPL protest camp.
https://player.fm/series/war-nerd-radio-subscriber-feed-1318...
Well, Trump could withdraw support for DACA as he promised, but he's now signed off on thousands of new DACAs, so he's in no hurry to change the program.
Welp.