#transcanda

Graffiti in Montreal in solidarity with the Unist'ot'en anti-pipeline blockade. Canadian police raided the camp on January 8, arresting 14 land defenders. 

About 5,000 barrels of oil, or about 210,000 gallons, gushed out of the Keystone Pipeline on Thursday in South Dakota, blackening a grassy field in the remote northeast part of the state and sending cleanup crews and emergency workers scrambling to the site.

“This is not a little spill from any perspective,” said Kim McIntosh, an environmental scientist with the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources. No livestock or drinking water sources appeared to be threatened, Ms. McIntosh said, and no farm buildings or houses are within a mile.

The spill, near Amherst, S.D., comes just days before regulators in neighboring Nebraska decide whether to grant the final permit needed to begin construction on a different pipeline proposal, the Keystone XL, which would be operated by the same company. An announcement in Nebraska is expected on Monday.

The pipeline company, TransCanada, said in a statement that the South Dakota leak was detected around 6 a.m. local time on Thursday. The pipeline was shut down, and the cause of the leak was under investigation.

“TransCanada appreciates the collaborative support of local officials, emergency response personnel and commissioners in Marshall County, as well as the landowner who has given permission to access land for assessment, identification and cleanup activities,” the company said in its statement.

A photo of the spill, which was posted to the company’s Twitter account, showed a large, darkened area in a field. The Keystone Pipeline is part of a 2,687-mile system that carries crude oil from Alberta to several points in the United States, including Illinois and Oklahoma.

A reporter for The Aberdeen American News at the scene of the spill said on Twitter that the area was blocked off by emergency vehicles.

Opponents of Keystone XL, which is proposed to run about 1,100 miles and would become part of the Keystone system, quickly cited Thursday’s spill as evidence of the risks posed by such pipelines, and urged Nebraska regulators to take note.

“We’ve always said it’s not a question of whether a pipeline will spill, but when, and today TransCanada is making our case for us,” Kelly Martin of the Sierra Club said in a statement. “This is not the first time TransCanada’s pipeline has spilled toxic tar sands, and it won’t be the last.”

Keystone XL has the strong support of President Trump and most Republican politicians, but it has faced years of vocal opposition in Nebraska from some farmers and ranchers who worry that a spill could spoil their groundwater and decimate agricultural land.

“That’s our fear — that pipelines do leak,” said Jeanne Crumly, whose farm near Page, Neb., is along the proposed Keystone XL route, after being told about the South Dakota spill.

Ms. Crumly and about 90 other Nebraska landowners have not signed easements with TransCanada and have urged against issuing a permit for the project. Nebraska’s Public Service Commission plans to announce on Monday morning whether it will approve the permit, the last major regulatory hurdle before construction on Keystone XL could begin.

Thursday’s episode is one of several major pipeline spills in recent years. 

More than a million gallons leaked from a pipeline into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan in 2010, and 50,000 gallons of oil gushed into the Yellowstone River in Montana in 2015, contaminating drinking water there.

Oil pipelines have faced greater scrutiny since thousands of protesters gathered near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota last year to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline. 

The site of Thursday’s spill was near the boundaries of the Lake Traverse Reservation, home of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate tribe.

Dave Flute, the tribal chairman of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, said he was contacted early in the afternoon by emergency management services and told that there was a “substantial leak” in the pipeline.

“We are monitoring the situation as this leak is adjacent to our reservation,” Mr. Flute said in a statement. “We do not know the impact this has on our environment at this time but we are aware of the leak.”

Ms. McIntosh, the South Dakota environmental official, said that TransCanada employees and contractors were at the spill site and that soil cleanup workers were on the way. The state was overseeing the response.

Ms. McIntosh said that the leak was “a large release” of oil, but that “the location of this is not in a sensitive area.”

The pipeline giant TransCanada, stymied in its attempt to drive Keystone XL through America's heartland, is facing renewed opposition to its "new and equally misguided proposal" to build the Energy East pipeline across Canada and ship tar sands oil via tankers along the U.S. East Coast to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.

In partnership with a number of Canadian and U.S. environmental groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)—a major player in the fight to defeat Keystone XL—on Tuesday released a new report outlining how Energy East would "effectively create a waterborne tar sands pipeline with hundreds of new oil tankers traversing the Atlantic coastline, making vast areas of the Eastern Seaboard vulnerable to a dangerous tar sands spill."

Indeed, the group notes that the Gulf of Maine, Acadia National Park, and the Florida Keys are all in the pipeline's "crosshairs," as well as iconic marine species and billion dollar commercial fisheries on the East Coast, including New England and Atlantic Canada's lobster and sea scallops fisheries.

And that's on top of the pipeline's climate impacts; according to the NRDC analysis, Energy East would bring a significant increase in carbon pollution—equivalent to the annual emissions of as many as 54 million passenger vehicles—and lock in high-carbon infrastructure expected to operate for at least 50 years.

"TransCanada's Energy East proposal is truly Keystone XL on steroids," said Joshua Axelrod, a co-author of the report and NRDC policy analyst. "It's all risk and no reward for millions of Canadians and Americans, iconic landscapes, valuable fisheries and our climate."

With the report, entitled Tar Sands in the Atlantic Ocean: TransCanada's Proposed Energy East Pipeline (pdf), the NRDC joins a chorus of existing Energy East opponents.

The project is currently under consideration by the National Energy Board (NEB), with hearings expected to begin in Saint John, New Brunswick, on August 8.

Thinking of my sister-in-law this morning. She's on a journey, walking the length of the proposed path of the XL Pipeline from TX all the way to Canada, filming a documentary along the way.

Obama has already said he is going to make this pipeline happen.

From DemocracyNow.org:

July 05, 2011

Montana Farmer Says Exxon Refuses to Admit Extent of Damage from Oil Spill Into Yellowstone River

Click here to see more photos of oil on Alexis Bonogofsky’s land.

Family farmer, Alexis Bonogofsky, didn’t get a phone call from ExxonMobil Pipeline Company when its pipeline ruptured Friday night beneath the Yellowstone River, leaking as much as 42,000 gallons of crude oil into the water and onto neighboring land of property owners such as herself. Instead, she discovered "globs of oil" Saturday morning while checking on the flooded pastureland where she grazes her goats. Since then she says company officials have failed to answer her questions about the health and environmental impact of the spill.

Please read more and listen to an interview with Bonogofsky (the above-mentioned farmer) at DemocracyNow.org.

What's ironic is that the Yellowstone River is known as "America's last best river".  What's even more ironic is that TransCanada is hoping to be allowed by the US State Department to pipe tar sands from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.