We are protectors, not protesters': why I'm fighting the North Dakota pipeline

[G_j]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/18/north-dakota-pipeline-activists-bakken-oil-fields

Iyuskin American Horse in Canon Ball, North Dakota
Thursday 18 August 2016 11.06 EDT

Our elders have told us that if the zuzeca sape, the black snake, comes across our land, our world will end. Zuzeca has come – in the form of the Dakota Access pipeline – and so I must fight.

I am Sicangu/Oglala Lakota, born in Rosebud, South Dakota, and writing from the frontline of the movement against the pipeline in Cannon Ball. I have been holding this ground with my Standing Rock Sioux tribe relatives since the spring. I am defending the land and water of my people, as my ancestors did before me.

The $3.8bn pipeline project is proposed to carry approximately 470,000 barrels per day of fracked oil from our Bakken oil fields, 1,172 miles through the country’s heartland, to Illinois. The pipeline will cross the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri rivers, where it threatens to contaminate our primary source of drinking water and damage the bordering Indigenous burial grounds, historic villages and sundance sites that surround the area in all directions. Those sites that were not desecrated when the area was flooded in 1948 by the construction of the Oahe dam are now in danger again.

"I have seen where their machines clawed through the earth that once held my relatives’ villages."

This week, I have witnessed pipeline construction tear its way toward the waters of the Missouri river which flow into the Mississippi, threatening to pollute the aquifer that carries drinking water to 10 million people. I have seen where their machines clawed through the earth that once held my relatives’ villages. I have watched law enforcement officials protect the oil industry by dragging away my indigenous brothers and sisters who stood up for our people.

...more...

[misterhighwasted]

1. This is such a beautiful undisturbed part of our country.

Unfortunately this "black snake" is welcomed by the Red States & Republican Governance.
I am so saddened by this self-serving, thoughtless decision .
This makes me sick and THIS issue right here, is why the Repubs want to open our Federal lands to oil drilling & mining.
Nothing & no one will motivate those hellbent on filling their pocket$.
Greed for money is truly the root of all evil

[snooper2]

3. More people wanting more Bomb Trains

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http://america.aljazeera.com/content/ajam/articles/2014/10/24/-bomb-trains-carryhighlyexplosivecrudeoilthroughneighborhoods/jcr:content/mainpar/adaptiveimage/src.adapt.960.high.Lac_Megantic_explosion_101414.1414428570122.jpg





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[womanofthehills]

6. Pipelines or trains - both are bad because the trains are old and the pipelines have bad welds

The oil companies need to step up and care about the environment when they are transporting their oil. There are also devastating pics of pipeline breaks. If the record of the oil companie's pipeline leaks and explosions was not so bad, people would not be so freaked out.

Putting crude oil in railcars meant for corn syrup- - disgusting - just because of the oil boom they had to get it out fast.

STERN: The DOT-111 - and that's its designation, and that's what it's known by - simply it's - some people call them the dot 111. But the DOT-111 was designed in the '60s, and it was really designed for something not flammable. It was designed for corn syrup, for instance, and far less flammable products. And since 1991 - so for 23 or 24 years now - the National Transportation Safety Board has been saying that this is a very dangerous railcar to put anything volatile into because it has a tendency to rupture whenever there's a derailment.
http://www.npr.org/2015/02/25/389008046/a-hard-look-at-the-risks-of-transporting-oil-on-rail-tanker-cars

[2naSalit]

2. K&R!!!!!

[womanofthehills]

4. Whats really bad is - there will be leaks!

List of pipeline accidents in the United States in the 21st century. There are about 50 bad pipeline leaks each year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pipeline_accidents_in_the_United_States_in_the_21st_century

[moondust]

8. And it cuts right through a lot of farm country.

Last edited Tue Aug 23, 2016, 01:20 PM - Edit history (1)

Bad news for the farm economy and some of the richest soil on the planet if it ever leaks--which it will.

[ismnotwasm]

5. K&R

[Mc Mike]

7. 'Protectors not protestors' is fantastic wording.

These oil-energy outfits are insane and suicidal. Tar sands and frackers want to destroy it all, for a bit more profit.

Those Lakota are protecting millions of people in those watersheds, as well as the land of America.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

9. K&R

[niyad]

10. Mni wakan, water is sacred. Mni Wiconi, water is life.

[womanofthehills]

11. Bad pipeline welds - this is from an old article on Keystone XL but bad welds universal

This is why there are so many pipeline accidents. "Built to the highest standards"?? This is from Keystone - but I'm sure it's relevant. PHMSA is - Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration - US Dept of Transportation.

From the start of welding,” the PHMSA wrote in a Sept. 26, 2013, letter (PDF), “TransCanada experienced a high weld rejection rate.” (That is, ultrasonic testing on the welds holding the pipes together determined they were not up to snuff.) “During the first week 26.8 percent of the welds required repairs, 32.0 percent the second week, 72.2 percent the third week, and 45.0 percent the fourth week. On September 25, 2012, TransCanada stopped the Spread 3 welding after 205 of the 425 welds, or 48.2 percent required repairs.”

Let that register.

During one week in September, 72 percent, or almost three-quarters, of the welds on the “safest pipeline in the world” required redoing. (TransCanada, for its part, says it has addressed the PHMSA’s concerns, and you can read its response in writing here [PDF].) Throughout the Keystone XL fight, TransCanada has maintained that the chance of a spill is remote, and that its pipelines are state-of-the-art. But the implications of TransCanada’s inferior welding on its Southern leg are precisely why the Keystone XL has met with such fierce resistance on the ground in Nebraska. It’s there the planned pipe will pass over the Ogallala aquifer, which irrigates much of the Great Plains, and directly and indirectly supports millions of American jobs—and that’s not counting all the drinking water.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-05-30/the-real-reason-keystone-xl-might-fail

[suffragette]

12. K&R