A negative impact of pipeline installation, and notably the most concerning to the public, is the destruction of land and the environment that must occur during installation. Underground pipelines generally extend over a great enough area that there are difficulties avoiding wildlife habitats, national parks, private land, and reservations. In general underground pipelines have an easement, or permanent rights to land of a set width following the length of the pipeline, of 30-60 feet. In addition, a temporary construction right-of-way typically double or triple the width is allowed during the development and construction phase. In certain areas, the land cleared for construction can be considered as total deforestation. Deforestation and environmental …show more content…
The Dakota Access Pipeline, a 1,172 mile long underground pipeline spanning from North Dakota to Illinois, is purposed to transport shale oil previously brought in by rail in order to reduce costs and increase readily available feedstocks. Concerns surround the destruction of Native American Indian reservations, sacred burial grounds, and national forests. A total of 55 Native American tribes are affected, most notably the Sioux and Meskwaki tribes. The project was given a construction right-of-way of 150 feet; allowing large portions of this sacred Native American land and national forests to be cleared. The pipeline construction plan also poses risk as the underground pipeline is set to extend under Lake Oahe, a source of clean water for locals. An additional concern for this installation involves political conflicts of interest. President Donald Trump, responsible for the federal authorizations allowing the completion of the project, is a known investor for several companies involved in the pipeline construction and operation giving rise to further …show more content…
An instance of subjective risk being far beyond the objective risk in the public eye is the risk of contamination through leaks in underground pipelines and the difficulty detecting leaks. Generally, public opposition arises from a lack of trust in competence for the proper design, construction, and operation of this method; history shows cutting corners in order to save costs can lead to disaster. In reality, regulations are in place and it has become standard to install robust leak detection systems along the length of pipelines. These detection systems are capable of detecting incredibly small leaks and have the capacity to notify workers for timely repair. While these detection systems are robust, the cost of installation can be large and the detection systems are thus spread out along the pipeline. Therefore, on the off-chance a leak were to occur in the space between two detectors, it has the potential to go undetected longer than anticipated and can lead to the contamination of crops and water sources. The majority of human beings view the act of putting fresh water sources in jeopardy as an immoral decision; we must determine at what point the installation of pipelines crosses the line from acceptable to
The Dakota Access Pipeline and the Keystone XL Pipeline are two pipeline projects that were suspended in the past. These pipelines were stopped because they could have a big impact of people and the environment. The making of these pipelines would cause a great amount of carbon pollution. Recently, President Trump signed the orders to approve the pipeline project. The projects have pros and cons, the people in favor of the pipelines think we would be able to rely less on foreign oil. The people against the pipeline believe that the pipelines would cause the release of gases into the air that could be harmful for other people.
On the 9th of February 2004 TransCanada Corporation, an energy company based in Alberta, Canada proposed a plan for the installation and use of a pipeline that would stretch from Alberta, Canada to oil refineries in the Gulf Coast of Texas in the United States. The pipeline, titled the Keystone Pipeline, would be installed in four separate phases and once completed would transport up to 1.1 million barrels of synthetic crude oil per day. Phases two through four of the pipeline encompass the parts of the pipeline that would be installed in the United States and would be located in the states of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Missouri, and Illinois. TransCanada is currently awaiting approval from the US government in order to begin the installation of the US portion of the pipeline.
We defiantly need to establish the safety behind this. But safety is not only for the people around the pipeline but for the impact the building of said pipe line will have on the environment around it. Also what safety nets do we have in place in case of environmental catastrophe.
Conservation banking was modeled after the U.S. wetland mitigation banking system and the two programs share many similarities. However, unlike the wetland mitigation system, conservation offsets do not have a stated ‘no net loss’ goal, but instead have a species recovery goal. Both conservation and wetlands mitigation banks are privately or publicly owned lands which are protected and managed for its ecological value. By doing this, the bank sponsor generates habitat or wetland or stream credits to sell to developers or transportation departments who need to offset their impacts and comply with the legal requirements for the permitting of development or roadway projects. Both types of banks offer benefits to both the landowner that owns the natural resource and the developer that needs to purchase the credits. The landowner can take portions of their property that may have been considered unusable and turn it into an asset. The developer can streamline their permitting process by purchasing credits instead of implementing a mitigation plan themselves.
The Keystone XL Pipeline Imagine the world not as how it is now, but as how people wish it could be. There is no pollution, everyone has a job, the world is at peace and a safe place to live, and most importantly, everyone is happy. This is but a mere dream. Now open your eyes and look at it. See the reality of what the world truly is: we are intentionally hurting the environment, many people in the world are unemployed, many different countries are at war and people are dying because of it.
From the arguments, it is evident that the negative effects of the construction of Keystone XL Pipeline supersede its positive impacts, both on the United States of America’s economy and environment. Therefore, it is important that the country takes into consideration the negative effects that might be associated with the pipeline before embarking on its construction.
Most of the rivers are the one being used by large communities like drinking water supply and for the farmers in their produce. The State of Department put together a commission of knowledgeable people and carried out an investigation about the risk and consequences of this project. Some of the conclusion about the spills were, for example, that: “A million of gallons of tar soil war poured into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan… 40 miles of this river still are contaminated to this day”. Another example of spills affecting communities, is the one in 2013, caused by a twenty foot crack in a pipeline, causing a huge spill of oil, damaging the residential neighborhoods and the Lake Conway in Arkansas. This spills and oil “accidents” are affecting not only the lives of people but also the wildlife, the ecosystems and the quality of air and water
The Keystone Pipeline started construction in 2008 for the main purpose of connecting Canadian and American oil refineries to transport crude oil from the oil sands of Canada faster and more efficient. So far the first three phases of the pipeline have been completed but the proposed and most controversial is Phase IV. It connects Hardisty, Alberta to Steele City, Oklahoma which requires a presidential permit and it also connects the 485-mile southern leg known as the Gulf Coast Project between Steele City and Port Arthur, Texas, which is now operating (Eilperin). The benefits of the pipeline include an increase in jobs, contribute $3.4 billion to the U.S economy and also save time and money from transporting the oil by pipeline instead of tanks and rails. At the same time it would be a great harm to the environment, making the climate unstable, and could cause possible future oil spills. The articles covering the Keystone Pipeline generally list out the same points, covering the same benefits and consequences of building the pipeline. Sources like Fox News and CNS have more of an opposition towards the pipeline and narrow in on the risks and of the effects it would have on the people. Whereas news stations such as CNN and The Washington Post address both sides of the controversy but are subtle about being in favor of the pipeline. The international sources such as Al Jazeera and Reuters oppose the pipeline and are more open with supporting the environmentalists.
Almost every single nation in our world today, the United States included, is extremely reliant on oil and how much of it we can obtain. Wars have started between countries vying for control of this valuable natural resource. The United States as a whole has been trying to reduce its reliance on foreign oil and has had some success, especially with the discovery of the Bakken formation and projects like the Keystone Pipeline. Projects like the Keystone Pipeline are important as they will allow us to transport more oil than we would be able to in train cars, and grant larger access to oil reserves in the United States and Canada. The Keystone Pipeline itself is an oil pipeline which runs from the western Canadian sedimentary basin in Alberta, Canada to refineries in the United States.
These two text are relevant to each other people because both issues have affected people's basic needs. Pipelines can contaminate water that leads to affecting the water, seafood, marine animals and First Nations' communities health.I can connect it to the history of built of pipelines when they do not construction crews don’t care whether they are in the way or not. When reading this passage it made me feel bother and infuriated when the water is affected because it affects people’s basic needs.
Natural Gas - The process of getting natural gas through drilling might cause the groundwater to be contaminated. The way that transport natural gas might disturb the environment
In 1995, an important event marked a victory for the national GreenPeace organization, and for humans alike. The Brent Spar oil installation was not allowed to be dumped into the ocean. The importance of this decision lied in the fact that there were over 600 oil installations that would someday expire just as the Brent Spar had. When the decision was made to not allow the dumping, it set a precident that the other installations would not be allowed to be dumped, either.
Conflict between residents in northern Nevada and SNWA has risen (Brean, 2015). In 2012 the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced its support of SNWA wanting to build a pipeline from rural Nevada to Las Vegas, rural Nevada being primarily in the northern portion of the state (Larsen et al., 2015). Residents including farmers who depend on water for their crops argue that redirecting water supplies would harm the environment and wildlife that inhabit northern Nevada (Brean, 2015). There is also an issue of oversubscription, this is due to the Colorado River not only supplying water to Nevada but neighboring states which include “Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah” (Wockner, 2014). Both Arizona and California are expecting water shortages in the future as they too depend on the Colorado River (Wockner, 2014).
Dakota Access Pipeline - 1,172 mile underground oil pipeline that begins in the Bakken shale oil fields in North Dakota and ends at an oil tank farm in Patoka, IL.
Also the land has to perk which means the land is not too wet and is safe for a structure and allows a septic tank to be installed that will function properly.