Environmentalists join ranchers in opposing Keystone XL oil pipeline
Andrea J. Cook Journal staff | May 13, 2010
U.S. Department of State
Environmentalists did most of the talking at a public hearing on the Keystone XL Pipeline in Faith Thursday.
Muddy roads and calving season may have kept area landowners from attending, but a couple landowners stood to comment on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Keystone XL, while others preferred to sit and watch.
Approximately 35 people attended the meeting. Almost 60 attended a similar meeting in Murdo Wednesday evening. A third hearing was held in Buffalo Thursday night.
The U.S. State Department is conducting the hearings because the pipeline crosses an international border, according to State Department official Elizabeth Orlando. Public comments will be accepted online until June 16. Written comments must be postmarked by June 16.
The proposed pipeline would stretch over 1,900 miles from Alberta, Canada, to Texas and carry oil from Alberta's tar sands. The 36-inch pipeline would cut a diagonal line across western South Dakota from northwestern Harding County through southeastern Tripp County.
Orlando said she has made a point of meeting with people and seeing the country the pipeline would cross.
"I don't think you want to call someone up who doesn't know what you're talking about," Orlando told the crowd.
But, most of the speakers at Thursday's meeting were not local residents.
A contingent from the Indigenous Environmental Network spoke about the damage the mining of the Canadian tar sands is doing to the Canadian environment and Indigenous people. The group is attending hearings and contacting tribal leaders along the proposed route of the pipeline to solicit their opposition to the pipeline.
Darrel Johnson of Minnesota warned of the damage the carcinogenic dilutants used to carry the oil through the pipeline can do to the environment if the pipeline is breached. Johnson lives near the Alberta Clipper pipeline.
"Once it gets into the water and ecosystems, it's done for," Johnson said. "These pipelines pose serious threats to your homeland, environment and water."
The money landowners and governments would receive from easements and taxes is not worth the damage a pipeline breach could inflict on wildlife and people, Heather Milton Lightning of Alberta said.
"Learn from our mistakes," Milton Lightning said. Milton Lightning urged people to dig through the 3,000-page impact statement and look at provisions for emergency response.
How Keystone would respond to a pipeline leak is problematic, according to Peter Carrols of the Sierra Club. According to Carrols, the impact statement acknowledges that responding to a pipeline leak could be an issue in remote regions and because of weather conditions.
No representatives from Keystone attended the hearing.
"These portend the potential for a catastrophe," Carrols said. The only way to avoid such a catastrophe is to not build the pipeline, he said.
Anita Lee of Hereford advised landowners at the meeting not to sign any easements with Keystone until January when new commissioners might take office. The county's current pipeline ordinance absolves Keystone from posting a bond to insure that road damage caused during construction will be repaired, she said.
Lee is running for the commission because of the 2009 ordinance and a friend's experience with Keystone in eastern South Dakota.
"They're (Keystone) still changing the rules," Lee said. Lee likened a permanent easement to getting married without knowing the wife and "there's no divorce."
Cheyenne River Sioux tribal member Chas Jewett represented the National Wildlife Federation at the meeting.
Nowhere in the impact statement does it talk about the impact the pipeline will have on pockets of wetlands scattered across western South Dakota or on water and game birds, Jewett said.
"My family lives at the mouth of the Moreau River that is now polluted with uranium from mining run-off," Jewett said. Children can't swim in the river and some drinking water sources are polluted, she said.
Jewett and others also mentioned the large quantities of groundwater required to get tar sand oil to flow through a pipeline.
Nancy Hilding, president of the Prairie Hills Audubon Society at Black Hawk, chastised Orlando and Freeman for making the impact statement difficult to locate. Hilding said the bulky document was difficult to download on a dial-up connection, which many rural people rely upon.
Copies of the impact statement are scattered at various libraries in the region and CD versions were available at the meetings.
The pipeline will cross Nina Vansickel's Opal ranch, and she said she doesn't want it. When Orlando advised the audience that they could take their opposition to the state Public Utilities Commission and Legislature, Vansickel shook her head. "We've done all that; it appears we don't have any say."
andrea.cook@rapidcityjournal.com.
http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/news/article_8662e1aa-5f09-11df-84d2-001...
