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Merged Dakota Access Pipeline

quadraginta said:
Of course, those are only the major ones. Too big to keep quiet.
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From one of your links...

On January 21, 2000, an Equilon Pipeline Co. crude oil line was ruptured off of the Louisiana coast, by an eight-ton anchor dropped by a ship. About 94,000 gallons of crude oil were spilled, creating a slick 2 miles wide by 7 miles long.
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I found that in 20 seconds. It does not apply to the context of the Dakota pipeline.

Somebody should reduce your linked citations down to oil pipelines that have leaked into rivers because that is the specific complaint being given for this project.

I wonder what would happen if you put a map of the whole big region in front of the protesters and said "mark where you want this pipeline to be". I wonder what would be the more popular location, or if the more popular thing would be to not mark any location and instead write "nowhere" on that map.
 
It will eventually come to a money settlement. Nothing is so sacred that you can't buy your way over it. Just find the right people to pay.

Best place to start looking is among the members of the tribal council.
 
quadraginta said:
This doesn't happen when it's white people's sacred ground.
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Probably because white people tend to define their sacred ground explicitly in writing, put a wall or a fence around it, and uphold it through established institutions of courts and governments.

White people are not usually able to block development simply because they like a scrap of land the way it is, or because they used to play in it as children.
 
theprestige said:
Probably because white people tend to define their sacred ground explicitly in writing, put a wall or a fence around it, and uphold it through established institutions of courts and governments.

White people are not usually able to block development simply because they like a scrap of land the way it is, or because they used to play in it as children.
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Yup.

That's the kind of attitude I'm talking about.
 
William Parcher said:
From one of your links...


I found that in 20 seconds. It does not apply to the context of the Dakota pipeline.

Somebody should reduce your linked citations down to oil pipelines that have leaked into rivers because that is the specific complaint being given for this project.

<snip>
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Why?

Are those leaks somehow fundamentally different from the other leaks?

No. They aren't.
 
quadraginta said:
Why?

Are those leaks somehow fundamentally different from the other leaks?

No. They aren't.
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The protesters are saying that the pipeline will leak into the river and poison the drinking water for the tribe. They aren't saying that the reason is because it will leak and ruin some soil 1000 miles away from the tribe.
 
If the argument is going to be that pipelines are inherently risky and shouldn't therefore be used at all, then links to leaks is a good way to support the case. But there's another side to the story. What happened after the leak? Because when I read about accidents I usually find information about fines and remediation.

If the argument is that environmental damage cannot be repaired, then I strongly disagree. When estimating risk, it isn't enough to point to an accident without continuing on to the consequences that followed or did not follow.

When a train derails or a fuel truck crashes, we clean up the mess. We don't stop building railroads or fuel trucks. We might put some effort into making them safer. And we can incentivize safety by making companies liable for spills they are responsible for. Remember BP and the Deepwater Horizon accident?
 
marplots said:
If the argument is going to be that pipelines are inherently risky and shouldn't therefore be used at all, then links to leaks is a good way to support the case. But there's another side to the story. What happened after the leak? Because when I read about accidents I usually find information about fines and remediation.

If the argument is that environmental damage cannot be repaired, then I strongly disagree. When estimating risk, it isn't enough to point to an accident without continuing on to the consequences that followed or did not follow.

<snip>
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I think the issue here is how the risk is evaluated, who is doing the evaluating, and who is actually going to take the brunt of the risk.

When those are decided primarily on the basis of who has the most political oomph and not what the risk actually is and where it really lies then there is room for dissent.
 
quadraginta said:
I think the issue here is how the risk is evaluated, who is doing the evaluating, and who is actually going to take the brunt of the risk.

When those are decided primarily on the basis of who has the most political oomph and not what the risk actually is and where it really lies then there is room for dissent.
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Indeed. That's where politics is the most useful - when we have conflicts between various groups. So we have the 8 - 10 thousand members of the tribe (not all of whom agree) against, presumably, everyone else along the pipeline who want it completed - since you need an entire pipeline or none at all.

Maybe we could take a vote?

What seems disingenuous is to make a claim based on land rights (the "sacred" land card) while ignoring the land rights of others (the people who own the land). They should consider dropping that bit. But I don't think they can because arguments based on risk are subject to risk assessments of the sort that have already been done and approved.

What I'm seeing instead are film clips of indians being arrested and stories about how the arrestees were mistreated. That's media gold. Because if I disapprove of heavy-handed police tactics I am almost automatically subsumed into the narrative about injustice attached to the pipeline itself, instead of how laws are being enforced.

This is a well-honed tactic. The only flaw is that when you bring a lot of attention to an issue, some people will look into the issue more deeply than you intended. The story line can get away from you.

ETA: On the risk side, I wonder if the indians would accept a trustfund-backed insurance guarantee? That's how we generally mitigate risk in a civilized society. Bet they wouldn't. Because it isn't really about risk, but about empowerment and who runs Bartertown.
 
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marplots said:
No, not specifically in this case.
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Odd. Since this is the way we generally mitigate risk (in our presumably civilized society) it would seem reasonable that someone would have stepped forward and make this proposal.

Who should that actor be? The state? The owner/builders of the pipeline?

It would certainly go a long way to lift the shadow from the motives of these parties.

One wonders why it hasn't happened already.
 
quadraginta said:
Odd. Since this is the way we generally mitigate risk (in our presumably civilized society) it would seem reasonable that someone would have stepped forward and make this proposal.

Who should that actor be? The state? The owner/builders of the pipeline?

It would certainly go a long way to lift the shadow from the motives of these parties.

One wonders why it hasn't happened already.
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I didn't mean to say it hasn't been done. In fact, I assume there'd be some bonding and insurance as part of the package for approval. It's just that I haven't looked into that, so can't say there is.

I'm really only stating my own ignorance about this bit.
 
I can see why being promised cash in exchange for accepting the plan might not seem to impressive from the perspective of the natives given the historical relationship. The reservations they were moved to were, in many cases, not capable of sustaining their population and so additional funds were part of many treaties to allow them to purchase food and other necessities. These disbursements were chronically late, less than promised, and fraud, embezzlement, and other corruption plagued the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The term Indian Agent pretty much implies malfeasance and self-dealing.

Moving on, generally, part of the approval of a project includes an Environmental Impact Assessment. It's hard to generate a lot of trust in an analysis that is written by the company proposing the project and reviewed by government agencies who are in those company's pockets. How much effort goes into creating these documents and/or carefully reviewing their veracity? In the case of the Macondo well (Deepwater Horizon):

Oil companies put whatever in their exploration plan and if all goes well the federal agency will rubber-stamp it. Consider this: In their Deepwater Horizon exploration plan that MMS had approved, BP had pledged that they would protect sensitive species including walrus, sea otters and sea lions — all cold-water species not found in the Gulf of Mexico. They did a cut-and-paste from some Arctic document.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/subhankar-banerjee/bping-the-arctic-again-fa_b_926856.html

Response procedures aren't all that impressive, either. Technology hasn't changed much in decades. Floating booms, surface skimmers, giant paper towels, dispersants, etc. The emphasis seems to be on removing visible evidence of oil on the surface of water or land with little actual removal. They frequently make claims for effective recapture and cleanup, but historically seem to end up only cleaning somewhere in the single-digits percentage of the spilled volume. Investing in cleanup technology costs money the oil companies aren't particularly interested in spending and independent companies specializing in such work are few and far between (being dependent on a totally random revenue stream). PR firms, on the other hand, are plentiful. The appearance of everything being fine seems to be their top priority. So much so that during the gulf spill, they refused to provide (or even allow) workers hired to clean beaches to wear robust safety gear so that cameras would show images that made the problem look minor.
 
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I am not sure if this has been posted here yet:

On the Dakota Access Pipeline, let’s stick to the facts

The protests might also give the false impression that Native American tribes had no input to the project. The public record shows that they did. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers held 389 meetings with 55 tribes to discuss the Dakota Access Pipeline. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe met with the corps nearly a dozen times to discuss archaeological issues and to help finalize the pipeline’s route.

That route was determined with the help of tremendous public input. Project leaders participated in 559 meetings with community leaders, elected officials and organizations in areas surrounding the Dakota Access Pipeline. To collect public input, 29 open houses, public meetings and regulatory hearings were held throughout the four states where the pipeline travels.
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I tend to think that the company might have been much, much better off if they had less confrontational security staff early on. They were, and continue to be overly confrontational and militaristic and seem blind to how counter-productive that is.

They did a lot right in the planning of this, then let their security staff blow the thing up in front of them. A bit of mid-field negotiation and a bit of actual listening might have worked wonders.
 
crescent said:
I am not sure if this has been posted here yet:

On the Dakota Access Pipeline, let’s stick to the facts




I tend to think that the company might have been much, much better off if they had less confrontational security staff early on. They were, and continue to be overly confrontational and militaristic and seem blind to how counter-productive that is.

They did a lot right in the planning of this, then let their security staff blow the thing up in front of them. A bit of mid-field negotiation and a bit of actual listening might have worked wonders.
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"Meetings" does not automatically mean the input was meaningfully considered. I've attended plenty of public meetings where the officials heard overwhelming disapproval and legitimate criticism of a plan and then went ahead and did what they wanted to anyways. Informing someone that you're going to do something, hearing their response, and then disregarding their concerns does still technically meet the definition of "meeting with them," but doesn't exactly sound like a good-faith effort.

That is why it was so disappointing to see the Obama administration cite tribal input when ordering a halt to construction of a small portion of the pipeline on Corps of Engineers land through and around Lake Oahe.
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I'm not aware of Obama ever issuing an order to halt, only a request that they voluntarily do so.

No one has shown that any sensitive tribal land is being jeopardized by the pipeline.
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That seems to be a point in dispute. This statement only holds water if one believes official government agencies are omniscient and free of corruption. The Department of the Interior doesn't exactly have a stellar track record in this regard.

When completed, the Dakota Access Pipeline will bring low-cost U.S. oil to markets in the Midwest, reducing our dependence on foreign oil.
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Oil is a global commodity, it is sold on an open market. Shale, like most "tight oil" is more expensive to refine into fuels, especially to levels needed to meet environmental regulations in developed countries. The "reduce our dependence on foreign oil" claim is a great applause line, but tends to be full of caveats and assumes almost perfect conditions. It might be true when prices are above $60/barrel, but otherwise it is probably not.
 
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