Community reacts to Keystone leak - all connected downstream [View all]

[suffragette]

http://www.ksfy.com/home/headlines/Community-reacts-to-Keystone-Pipeline-leak-near-Freeman--374558521.html

Howard area rancher Mike Sibson said, "It took a farmer, or somebody with eyes to detect the leak. We were told that the technology was so good and precise, it would be detected by the system before a landowner would even see a leak."

"We have layers to our leak detection system. Some of that is alert landowners, which is why there's so much effort to put in the public awareness programs that we have. There's also our high-tech oil control center," Howard said.

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Yankton Sioux Tribe treaty committee chair Faith Spotted Eagle is saddened to hear about a leak on the land of her ancestors.

"Right away, my heart sunk because we knew this was going this happen, the landowners, the tribes, the grassroots people. We're all working together on this because this is our land, no matter who has deed on it, it's all connected down stream," Faith Spotted Eagle said.

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/04/05/transcanada-shuts-keystone-pipeline-over-leak-we-dont-know-where-its-coming

Still, the TransCanada representative assured the public that the company has in place “layers to our leak detection system” and that alert landowners are only part of the equation, the other being “our high tech oil control center.” During the South Dakota Public Utility Commission meetings Spotted Eagle and other Keystone XL opponents from several Dakota/Lakota tribes and South Dakota landowners were reassured repeatedly by TransCanada officials that the oil control center would immediately catch any leaks.

“Their hotshot computer system did not detect the spill,” Spotted Eagle wrote on Facebook while posting a photo of herself with the Simpson family, the ranchers who discovered the spill. “Our worst fears have been realized. They are still investigating…. Haven't isolated the leak. STOP DAKOTA ACCESS NOW.”

Elizabeth Lone Eagle, an official intervener for the state of South Dakota, scoffed at TransCanada’s early reports that only 187 gallons of oil were spilled. She noted the spill’s close proximity to the James and Missouri rivers and worried that the “groundwater contamination is heading to Yankton, Vermillion, Sioux City... all the way down.”

During the South Dakota PUC hearings, Lone Eagle was unable to get a TransCanada spokesperson to admit that her community of Bridger on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation was actually a human habitation; the spokesperson simply refused, citing reasons of “Homeland Security.” Due to its proximity to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, admitting that her community existed would have incurred greater costs and safety measures to the project.

So, basically people in the area are expected to act as unpaid 'spotters' for leaks and why add additional safety measures since they won't even acknowledge certain communities exist there.