PART IV
BY TALLI NAUMAN
PIERRE – As tribal representatives and members took part in South Dakota’s Keystone XL Pipeline hearings Oct. 29-31, a large oil spill into a wetland in neighboring North Dakota underscored testimony here against permitting the use of public water for construction of the private infrastructure.
“Water that is contaminated by an oil leak or spill is damaging at best – and deadly at worst – to the health of people, livestock, wildlife, and fisheries,” said Dakota Rural Action in response to the 383,000-gallon (9,000-barrel) spill of tar-sands crude oil, or diluted bitumen.
The leaking dilbit, a toxic material, caused a shutdown of the Keystone I Pipeline after discovery of the damage Oct. 30, which affected wetlands near Edinburg, 75 miles northwest of Grand Forks, according to the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality.
Dakota Rural Action objects to permitting Keystone I’s sister KXL Pipeline, as do Mniwakan Nakicijinpi (Lone Eagle family youth pipeline fighters), the Yankton (Ihanktonwan), Rosebud, and Cheyenne River Sioux tribal governments, the Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance, and individuals from Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska.
TC Energy Corp., formerly named TransCanada Corp., seeks nearly 167 million gallons of water over a two-year period from the Cheyenne, White, and Bad rivers for use in building and testing the tar-sands crude oil line.
In addition, separate individual well owners are seeking two permits to divert flow from Inyan Kara and Hell’s Creek underground water tables in order to assure supply for six man-camps — squatter settlements for the transient workers from elsewhere who would be hired to install the line.
The South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources, DENR, has recommended the state Water Management Board approve all the water rights applications for surface and underground water requested for the hazardous materials pipeline.
TC Energy Corp. operates the Keystone I Pipeline from Canada to the Texas Gulf. It spilled dilbit more than a dozen times in 2011, the first year of operations.
“This most recent spill brings stark clarity to the fact that, despite lack of consideration by DENR staff in their recommended approval of these permits, the quantity of water available to downstream users is highly dependent on the quality of that water,” Dakota Rural Action said in a written statement: Ihanktonwan Tribal Historic Preservation Officer Kip Spotted Eagle testified against surface water permits for KXL construction, because “the river is a traditional cultural property.”
In Billings, Montana, on Oct. 29, pipeline fighters rallied in freezing 10-degree weather outside the venue of a U.S. State Department meeting about the latest Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (DSEIS) for the project.
The rally, filled with participants carrying “Protect Our Water” and “No KXL” signs, afforded speakers public exposure denied by the meeting format. Rally goers traveled on icy roads from across Lakota Territory.
The DSEIS is crucial to the future of the Keystone XL Pipeline, since its finalization will influence permitting decisions from the Bureau of Land Management and the Army Corps of Engineers on a proposed Missouri River crossing of the pipeline.
The proposed site of the pipeline crossing is below the spillway of the Ft. Peck Dam, which releases water at up to 65,000 cubic feet per second, creating potential for “scour erosion” of the riverbed that could lead in turn to exposure of the buried infrastructure, making it “highly susceptible to leaks,” the Western Organization of Resource Councils said in a media advisory.
“I can tell you without a doubt that the Keystone XL Pipeline poses a direct threat to our water system,” said Bill Whitehead, chair of the Assiniboine and Sioux Rural Water Supply System on the Ft. Peck Indian Reservation.
“The site where the KXL Pipeline would cross the Missouri River is directly upstream from the intake for our drinking water. This provides water not only to all of Fort Peck, but also to communities further east of us. As many as 30,000 people could have their drinking water affected by a pipeline spill,” Whitehead said.
“We also have water intakes downstream from the proposed pipeline crossing that serve our irrigation system,” he said. “This irrigation system is part of a 100-year agreement with the U.S. government. We depend on this water to grow our food and take care of livestock. Our very existence is dependent on this water.”
Adding his opinion was Sen. Frank Smith of Poplar, Montana on the Ft. Peck Indian Reservation. “We know from history that the question is not if a pipeline spills but when,” he said. “This tar sands oil is dangerous stuff that is impossible to clean up when it leaks,” he added.
“Our water system will be destroyed by a KXL spill,” he predicted. “We refuse to sacrifice our water for the sake of a Canadian oil company.”
Indigenous Environmental Network representative Kandi Mossett White complained that the meeting was the only opportunity for members of the public to comment on the subject, and tribal participants had to travel hundreds of miles from their reservations in North and South Dakota in order to attend.
Only then did they find out their rally would be confined to a corral with a sign on it reading “Free Speech Zone.” She said the security measures for attending the event were drastic.
“It’s not even a hearing,” she said. “You can go in and talk to a stenographer, who will then write down what you have to say, but you don’t get an actual public audience.”
Adherents of Bold Nebraska also had to travel hundreds of miles to attend the event. “Tribal nations, landowners and water protectors have stood together for 10 years fighting this black snake,” they said.
“TransCanada has trampled the sovereign rights of tribal nations and abused eminent domain for private gain to try to take pristine farmland against the wishes of families who have stewarded the land for generations,” Bold Nebraska claimed.
TC Energy Corp. literature states that pipelines are the safest way to move dilbit from Canada to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast and markets abroad.
Bold Nebraska argues that if the line is finished through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, it will pump “the dirtiest tar-sands oil on the planet from where it’s mined in Alberta, Canada, threatening the heartland of America and the precious Ogallala Aquifer along the way to a Saudi-owned refinery on the Gulf Coast, where it will be then shipped to overseas markets.”
The Keystone XL Pipeline “was a bad idea when it was proposed 11 years ago, and it remains a bad idea today,” the grassroots organization contended in Billings.
“TransCanada bullies landowners. TransCanada ignores meaningful consultation with tribal nations. TransCanada tries to buy off county board members. TransCanada minimizes the real risks to our water, and endangered species like the whooping crane and the burying beetle,” it said.
TC Energy Corp. said only one landowner’s property was impacted by the so-called Edinburg Incident “and we will ensure we restore the property.”
At press time, the company said it was “too soon to announce when the system will be fully operational again.” It added, “TC Energy is conducting a full investigation into the cause of the release. Our focus right now is containment, clean-up and the continued safety of the public and the environment.”
Kendall Mackey, 350.org U.S. Campaigner for Keep It In The Ground, responded, saying: “This is not the first time that the Keystone Pipeline has leaked and it will not be the last. Disasters like these are among the many reasons we’ve been fighting the Keystone XL for almost a decade, watching as each new spill from Keystone I and other major pipelines render ecosystems unlivable for thousands of people.
“Despite what TC Energy says, we know that these spills are inevitable and demonstrate why we cannot allow Keystone XL to be completed.”
Roads around the spill area were closed as a foul but harmless odor arose from the spill, consisting of enough liquid to fill half an Olympic-size swimming pool, according to the company.
Mackey insisted: “Not only must Keystone XL be stopped, but Congress must hold TC Energy accountable and demand that they pay for the care and repair needed for the devastating ecological destruction that communities are forced to endure.
There is no such thing as a safe fossil fuel pipeline.”
The South Dakota Water Management Board set another permit hearing for Dec. 17-19. The State Department is accepting public comments until Nov. 18 on the new Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (DSEIS) for TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline project.
(Contact Talli Nauman at talli.nauman@gmail.com)
