Breaking: Another Oil Train Derails and Burns in North Dakota

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19. Pipelines threaten to destroy pristine rural areas

They have the potential to contaminate water supplies on which major cities depend. Even the coating on the outside of the pipes intended to keep them corroding can release toxins into the water supply.

They disrupt wildlife migration routes.

Once they go through a farm, the soil above them becomes unfarmable.

They run across steep slopes, causing destructive erosion, and across streams and rivers, putting fish at risk. They are a threat to the tourism and recreation on which many rural areas depend without supplying any local economic benefits in exchange.

Even land that taxpayers have paid to protect from development is open to being seized through eminent domain.

The construction companies that promise landowners to put things back almost exactly the way they were often leave destruction and polluted wells in their wake.

And where there aren't enough rural areas lined up in a row, they plow through shopping centers and suburban backyards.

"Rural areas" is not a synonym for "nobody gives a damn."