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The Army Corp of Engineers is now accepting public comment until February 20th regarding the permits for the Dakota Access Pipeline.
You may mail or hand deliver written comments to Mr. Gib Owen, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, 108 Army Pentagon, Washington, DC 20310-0108. Advance arrangements will need to be made to hand deliver comments. Please include your name, return address, and "NOI Comments, Dakota Access Pipeline Crossing" on the first page of your written comments. Comments may also be submitted via email to Mr. Gib Owen, at gib.a.owen.civ@mail.mil. If emailing comments, please use "NOI Comments, Dakota Access Pipeline Crossing" as the subject of your email.
The location of all public scoping meetings will be announced at least 15 days in advance through a notice to be published in the local North Dakota newspaper (The Bismarck Tribune) and online at https://www.army.mil/?asacw.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:Mr. Gib Owen, Water Resources Policy and Legislation, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, Washington, DC 20310-0108; telephone: (703) 695-6791; email: gib.a.owen.civ@mail.mil.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:The proposed crossing of Lake Oahe by Dakota Access, LLC is approximately 0.5 miles upstream of the northern boundary of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's reservation. The Tribe protests the crossing primarily because it relies on Lake Oahe for water for a variety of purposes, the Tribe's reservation boundaries encompass portions of Lake Oahe downstream from the proposed crossing, and the Tribe retains water, treaty fishing, and hunting rights in the Lake.
The proposed crossing of Corps property requires the granting of a right-of-way (easement) under the Mineral Leasing Act (MLA), 30 U.S.C. 185. To date, the Army has not made a final decision on whether to grant the easement pursuant to the MLA. The Army intends to prepare an EIS to consider any potential impacts to the human environment that the grant of an easement may cause.
Specifically, input is desired on the following three scoping concerns:
(1) Alternative locations for the pipeline crossing the Missouri River;
(2) Potential risks and impacts of an oil spill, and potential impacts to Lake Oahe, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's water intakes, and the Tribe's water, treaty fishing, and hunting rights; and
(3) Information on the extent and location of the Tribe's treaty rights in Lake Oahe.
Those wishing to submit comments opposing the pipeline can do so directly at the email address listed above, or use web pages setup to do so by the following groups:
Likewise, if you support the pipeline you can comment as well and respond to the questions asked via email or letter to the addresses listed above.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Friday February 10 2017, @08:26PM
Modern pipelines are heavily regulated. If there were really a problem here, then they could make a regulation for it.
Mr. Corporate profits over here suddenly is totally ok with government regulation? These cognitive dissonances are maddening. Regulation == BAD until it suddenly helps your argument? Government overreach, until it lets you have your way? There is a perfect example. It is you, 100%. Moving the goalposts back and forth so much that it is impossible to pin down any argument. It is the same technique Trump uses (surprise?) all the time, just flat refusal of facts, denial of previous statements, and going along with any statement as long as it helps your specific cause. You have zero values except corporate interests and the bottom line. The "crazy" may just be intentional, not caring what facts you spout as long as all roads lead to profit.
I don't know how exhaustively I can point this stuff out, done it many times before and you still act all innocent. As for pipelines, there IS a problem. I don't recall if it is in this story's comments, but I did some digging and it turns out pipelines actually leak more oil into the environment than trains! It is just that some clever statistics hide that fact behind "number of incidents". Trains have more incidents of leakage, but pipelines leak way more per incident, to the tune of 3x more. So, if there really is a problem here then this pipeline that goes over a drinking water reservoir should be re-examined and preferably moved / closed down.
But lets see what madness you come up with this time to support the project...
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 11 2017, @01:05PM
Mr. Corporate profits over here suddenly is totally ok with government regulation? These cognitive dissonances are maddening.
They are your cognitive dissonances. You are spending way too much time straw man building here.
Regulation == BAD until it suddenly helps your argument? Government overreach, until it lets you have your way?
The point here is that the pipeline builders are playing by the rules. Yet instead of allowing activities that jump through all the hoops, the Obama administration simply obstructed the activity on invented grounds. There is this thing called "rule of law" [oxforddictionaries.com] which is "the restriction of the arbitrary exercise of power by subordinating it to well-defined and established laws." The rules may suck, but it at least strongly prevents parties like the incoming Trump administration from just doing whatever they feel like, such as the recent example of preventing legal visitors and residents of the US from entering the US. If the Obama administration is allowed to prevent activities merely by inventing something, then the Trump administration and any further administrations, some which might be worse, can use the same trick for their own purposes.
Moving the goalposts back and forth so much that it is impossible to pin down any argument.
I think it would help here, if you actually tried to understand my arguments.
It is the same technique Trump uses (surprise?) all the time, just flat refusal of facts, denial of previous statements, and going along with any statement as long as it helps your specific cause.
Please remember that everything that hinders the Obama administration from doing the right thing also hinders the Trump administration from doing the wrong thing. There are a huge number of Pollyannas out there who just don't get that abuses of power and legal shortcuts can be used against them as well as for them.
I don't know how exhaustively I can point this stuff out, done it many times before and you still act all innocent.
It doesn't matter how deeply you hold an erroneous belief, how long you argue such a belief, or how many people agree with you. It's still erroneous.
As for pipelines, there IS a problem. I don't recall if it is in this story's comments, but I did some digging and it turns out pipelines actually leak more oil into the environment than trains!
A little over a factor of two [portofgraysharbor.com] more oil per barrel-mile due solely to the recent safety improvements in tanker railcar safety (notice that the two were near comparable until the last ten years). And it includes pipelines that are over 50 years old. That might not sound like a big deal, until you learn that most pipelines are over 50 years old (more accurately, 55% are over 47 years old [cnn.com] as of last year) while tanker rail cars are taken off the track at 40 years. So we really need to compare modern pipelines to modern rail cars.
But then we get into the problem that neither mode of transportation spill that much. And the whole point of this pipeline is that it moves a vast amount of material cheaply, while the rail system is at capacity. I think that's the real reason the pipeline is being obstructed here. It expedites more fracking of North Dakota oil and such, both by allowing more to move in the first place and second, by increasing to modest degree the profits that frackers receive. I don't have a problem with that, but it sounds like you do.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Monday February 13 2017, @12:17AM
There was no illegal obstruction, actual source please if I'm mistaken and not some alt-right inflammatory garbage. I understand your position, its just that I see through a lot of the BS that you apparently believe is legitimate. You have many times been against one thing, then suddenly for it when it suits your agenda.
I think you nailed it on the head here: "It expedites more fracking of North Dakota oil and such, both by allowing more to move in the first place and second, by increasing to modest degree the profits that frackers receive."
Fracking is terrible for the environment, pollutes aquifers with vague assurances that somehow they guarantee it won't... Corporate bullshit to silence the whiny environmentalists. I would vastly prefer the billions of dollars go into renewable energy farms and infrastructure improvements to match. The likes of you I don't consider evil, just so narrow minded that you would run the country into the ground because "profits!" This oil problem would be much smaller if the country had listened to the environmental scientists in the 70s, but that would have required investment of capital instead so they put a much smaller amount into PR and garbage research to sway public. And here we are, corporate interests have bought a grass roots movement most could only dream of.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 13 2017, @02:30PM
There was no illegal obstruction, actual source please if I'm mistaken and not some alt-right inflammatory garbage.
It hasn't had time to go to court. And why again is legal abuse of power by the feds ok? Please let us all recall that Trump now has that power.
I think you nailed it on the head here: "It expedites more fracking of North Dakota oil and such, both by allowing more to move in the first place and second, by increasing to modest degree the profits that frackers receive."
Fracking is terrible for the environment, pollutes aquifers with vague assurances that somehow they guarantee it won't...
Well, an EPA study [epa.gov] says otherwise.
EPA found scientific evidence that hydraulic fracturing activities can impact drinking water resources under some circumstances. The report identifies certain conditions under which impacts from hydraulic fracturing activities can be more frequent or severe:
Water withdrawals for hydraulic fracturing in times or areas of low water availability, particularly in areas with limited or declining groundwater resources;
Spills during the handling of hydraulic fracturing fluids and chemicals or produced water that result in large volumes or high concentrations of chemicals reaching groundwater resources;
Injection of hydraulic fracturing fluids into wells with inadequate mechanical integrity, allowing gases or liquids to move to groundwater resources;
Injection of hydraulic fracturing fluids directly into groundwater resources;
Discharge of inadequately treated hydraulic fracturing wastewater to surface water;
and Disposal or storage of hydraulic fracturing wastewater in unlined pits resulting in contamination of groundwater resources.
None of those activities are necessary to fracking. One doesn't need, for example, wells with inadequate mechanical integrit or to inject wastewater into groundwater in order to frack.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Monday February 13 2017, @05:44PM
Such sweet innocence, keep living the dream guy.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 14 2017, @12:17AM
Such sweet innocence, keep living the dream guy.
Pretty heavy projection there. If the EPA under the Obama administration can't find these alleged problems with properly done fracking, the EPA under the Trump administration sure won't.