#stopetp

4/25/2017 - Detroit Free Press

“While the mud does not contain health-harming chemicals, it can smother wildlife, fish and invertebrates like worms and dragonflies, he added, and described both wetlands as floodplains.

The spill, covering 500,000 square feet, was caused by pressure during drilling that allowed mud to rise to the surface, Lee said.

The next day, about 50,000 gallons of bentonite spilled in Richland County, about 70 miles northeast of Columbus, after a pump failed.

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In response to the Ohio spills, Nancy Shiffler, chairwoman of the nonprofit Sierra Club Michigan Beyond Gas and Oil, called for a halt to Rover pipeline construction and an investigation by environmental regulators.

"It’s not a chemically toxic kind of spill; bentonite is a clay kind of material," she said. "But it is messing up a wetland, and that’s why Ohio EPA is getting involved. (Energy Transfer Partners) say it’s a normal process, but spilling it, presumably, is not a normal process."

Shiffler also called for heightened scrutiny of another large, multi-state natural gas transmission line that would cross into Michigan, the Nexus pipeline, in which DTE Energy is a major investor. That pipeline is still under consideration by the Federal Energy Regulator Commission and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.

3/20/2017 -  The Nation

“By now, the divestment numbers are getting hard to ignore. Between Davis, Santa Monica, and Seattle alone—the three cities that have opted to sever their ties with Wells Fargo—the campaign will ultimately deprive Wells Fargo of more than $4 billion in deposits, fees, and more. Admittedly, that figure is only a tiny portion of the bank’s $1 trillion in annual deposits, but that doesn’t mean that DAPL divestment is mere symbolism.

Movements require momentum and, from that vantage point, something important is happening here.

“Fighting against climate change, fighting for a new direction for our planet and environment, fighting for the rights of oppressed people will require fighting the financial oligarchy and the oil lobby as a whole,” says Seattle’s Sawant. “For a movement led by indigenous and environmental activists to deliver this kind of blow to any arm of that oligarchy is very noteworthy.”Indeed, she adds, “it’s a huge step forward.”“

3/3/2017 - Michigan Radio

“There are a pair of natural gas pipelines being planned for Michigan. One is called NEXUS. Its main owners are Spectra Energy and DTE Energy. The other pipeline is called Rover. It's owned by Energy Transfer, which owns close to 5,000 Sunoco gas stations.

Both will carry natural gas from the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania, crossing Ohio, through Michigan, and into Canada. They could use eminent domain powers granted to them by the federal government. A lot of homeowners along the route are not happy.

In a recent article for the Detroit Metro Times, Michael Jackman lays out the concerns of landowners whose property lies in the planned path for the 250-mile NEXUS Pipeline.

Among those concerns is the possibility a leak could take place somewhere along the pipeline.

“You’re talking about a 36-inch pipe that’s carrying 1.5 billion cubic feet of gas every day,” Jackman said. “Where there’s a rupture along that pipe, it’s often accompanied by a fireball. This the company’s words: 'It is an incineration zone.' In other words, everything within 1,000 to 1,250 feet of that ruptured pipe can be incinerated, vaporized by the blast.”

It isn’t just the risk of a leak along the pipeline that has landowners worried. Homeowners in neighborhoods through which the pipeline crosses are facing declines in property values, and there are immediate costs imposed during the construction of the pipe.”

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parkland and farmland could be permanently altered to clear a path for the pipeline.

“For people in Ypsilanti Township who enjoy the tree lines at Hydro Park North and South, they intend to go through and remove roughly two acres of trees so they can have a permanent right of way," Jackman said. "Nothing can be built there again. You find that all of a sudden these areas that were retreats, or woodlands, or productive farmland, will have to be, in many cases, dewatered and have a pipeline put in.””

1-10-2017 - Truthout

“An Indigenous Water Protector and an Alpine, Texas, resident were arrested Saturday morning after locking themselves to pipe-laying equipment at an Energy Transfer Partner (ETP) easement and work site in Presidio County, Texas. The lockdown temporarily halted construction on the company's 148-mile Trans-Pecos pipeline that, if completed, would carry 1.4 billion cubic feet of fracked gas from West Texas to Mexico every day.

The action was the first to be organized by a new Indigenous-led prayer and resistance camp on private land in far west Texas' pristine Big Bend region. The camp is acting in solidarity with the Sacred Stone and Oceti Sakowin camps' historic standoff against the Dakota Access pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota. The same Dallas-based company is behind both the Trans-Pecos and Dakota Access pipelines.

Jakki Hagans and Mark Glover, the two Water Protectors arrested Saturday, have been working to organize the "Two Rivers" or "La Junta de Los Rios" camp as members of the Society of Native Nations (SNN) and the Big Bend Defense Coalition (BBDC), respectively, during the last several weeks. They were each charged with trespassing and released on $250 bonds that same afternoon.

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The high-pressure Trans-Pecos pipeline is already close to completion and is billed to run from Coyanosa, Texas to the border near Presidio, Texas -- cutting right through the heart of the Big Bend area's ecologically sensitive Chihuahuan desert bioregion, a place that is both breathtakingly serene and extremely remote. The region is one of the only areas of the state that has, until now, remained unadulterated by oil and gas infrastructure.

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The land the pipeline has horrifically scarred is Lipan Apache and Conchos territory, and the Native Water Protectors organizing the Two Rivers camp say they are protecting their sacred sites in much the same way Standing Rock's Water Protectors are. Truthout has previously reported that many such sacred sites, including potentially Indigenous burial sites, have already been destroyed or are threatened.“