On Tuesday, President Donald Trump issued two executive memorandum aimed at reviving both the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, two controversial fossil fuel projects that had been either rejected or stalled by President Obama.
This same week, two separate pipelines — one in Canada, another in Iowa — sprang leaks, spilling a combined 190,000 gallons of fossil fuel. And while the overall legality of Trump’s executive orders is already being questioned, the actions were steadfastly opposed by environmental activists and those who live along the proposed pipeline routes, who are explicitly afraid of how a spill might impact their land and water.
The spill in Iowa leaked an estimated 138,600 gallons of diesel fuel onto private agricultural land, but is expected to cause road closures for at least two days. The leak occurred near a small creek located on the agricultural land, but Iowa officials say there is no evidence the oil has contaminated surface or groundwater yet.
“It’s a big one — it’s significant,” said Jeff Vansteenburg, a field office supervisor for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources told the Des Moines Register.
The leak came from a 12-inch pipeline system operated by Magellan Midstream Partners L.P. The Iowa DNR is investigating the situation to determine whether Magellan violated any Iowa Administrative Codes which might have contributed to the leak.
In Canada, a pipeline carrying oil leaked some 52,000 gallons onto First Nations land in the Saskatchewan province late last week and into early this week. The break occurred late last Friday, according to the Saskatchewan provincial government, and cleanup efforts had recovered about 45,000 gallons of that oil by Monday.
Government officials are not sure what company is responsible for the leak — there are “a number of pipes in that area,” according to the assistant deputy minister in the Ministry of the Economy — but Tundra Energy Marketing, a Canadian oil and gas company, is leading the cleanup effort. As of Monday, the spill had been contained.
The spill was discovered when a local resident, who had been smelling oil for a week, located the spill and alerted the community’s chief. There are no homes near the spill, but it occurred within 1,320 feet of the community’s local cemetery.
The spills are a stark reminder of the environmental dangers of pipeline projects, even as Trump moves full speed ahead with attempts to revive stalled projects like Keystone and Dakota Access. Both projects faced huge backlash from environmentalists and landowners along the proposed routes, who worried that the pipelines would spill and cause environmental damages.
In the case of Dakota Access, the Standing Rock Sioux — alongside protesters known as water protectors — used the rallying cry “water is life” to demonstrate the danger of running a pipeline beneath the tribe’s only source of drinking water. They also contend that the pipeline had been rerouted from its original route — which would have run through the predominantly white suburbs of Bismarck — because of concerns that a spill could contaminate drinking water.
Pipeline spills, while rare, do occur, and tend to be larger in scale and impact than spills from oil trains. According to analysis from the Center for Biological Diversity, North Dakota has averaged four pipeline spills a year since 1996, costing more than $40 million in property damage. Despite opposition from landowners, the North Dakota House just passed a bill that would not require companies to report pipeline spills smaller than 420 gallons.
But pipeline spills are not a uniquely North Dakotan problem — since 2010, there have been 4,269 pipeline incidents across the entire country, and 64 of them involved fatal injuries, according to an analysis by InsideEnergy. And those accidents have come with a hefty price tag, costing a total of $3.5 billion in damage.
It’s unclear how far Trump’s executive actions will go towards reviving the two pipeline projects, with Politico reporting that the president might already be running into legal and organizational roadblocks. Trump’s hastily issued executive actions have not been run through the agencies they would impact — the Trump administration did not consult the State Department on the Keystone action, for example, even though the State Department would need to issue a permit for the pipeline to go through, and even though the company behind the pipeline is currently suing the U.S. for $15 billion. The State Department spent years studying the environmental and economic impact of the Keystone Pipeline under the Obama administration, but Trump reportedly did not ask for their expertise on the matter before issuing his memorandum.
“The notion you would do something like this on an issue impacting a claim against the U.S. government for $15 billion without getting a full briefing from people involved — that’s more than unusual, that’s reckless,” Keith Benes, a former State Department lawyer who handled Keystone, told Politico.