What you need to know about the Dakota Access Pipeline

Here's another situation at the bloody crossroads where human advancement and planned decline meet.

North Dakota Representative Kevin Kramer, writing at the Daily Signal, lays out the relevant facts - cultural, economic and procedural - about the pipeline that has been the focus of such recent protest:

This 1,172-mile Dakota Access pipeline will deliver as many as 570,000 barrels of oil a day from northwestern North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa to connect to existing pipelines in Illinois. It will do this job far more safely than the current method of transporting it by 750 rail cars a day.

The protesters say they object to the pipeline’s being close to the water intake of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. However, this should be of no concern as it will sit approximately 92 feet below the riverbed, with increased pipe thickness and control valves at both ends of the crossing to reduce the risk of an incident, which is already low.

Just like the companies that run the 10 other fossil-fuel pipelines crossing the Missouri River upstream of Standing Rock, Energy Transfer Partners—the primary funder of this pipeline—is taking all necessary precautions to ensure that the pipeline does not leak.

But even if there were a risk, Standing Rock will soon have a new water intake that is nearing completion much further downstream near Mobridge, South Dakota.

From the outset of this process, Standing Rock Sioux leaders have refused to sit down and meet with either the Army Corps of Engineers or the pipeline company.

The Army Corps consulted with 55 Native American tribes at least 389 times, after which they proposed 140 variations of the route to avoid culturally sensitive areas in North Dakota. The logical time for Standing Rock tribal leaders to share their concerns would have been at these meetings, not now when construction is already near completion.

The original pipeline was always planned for south of Bismarck, despite false claims that it was originally planned for north of Bismarck and later moved, thus creating a greater environmental danger to the Standing Rock Sioux.

The real reasons for not pursuing the northern route were that the pipeline would have affected an additional 165 acres of land, 48 extra miles of previously undisturbed field areas, and an additional 33 waterbodies.

It would also have crossed zones marked by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration as “high consequence” areas, and would have been 11 miles longer than the preferred and current route.

Will this change the minds of any of those posting on Facebook in solidarity with the protesters?