Throughout the battle over the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL), Indigenous campaigners and their allies repeatedly warned it was not a question of if, but when a breach would occur.
Now, before the pipeline is even fully operational, those warnings have come to fruition.
The Associated Press reports Wednesday:
“At the pipeline’s pump station there’s what’s called a surge tank, which is used to store crude oil occasionally during the regular operation of the pipeline,” Brian Walsh, an environmental scientist with the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources Ground Water Quality Program, told Dakota Media Group. “And connected to that tank is a pump, which pumps oil back into the pipeline system, and the leak occurred at that surge pump.”
The pipeline operated by Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) is expected to be in service by June 1.
“As far as this happening during the start-up, I don’t want to make it sound like a major event, but the fact that you had oil leaving the tank says there’s something not right with their procedures,” longtime pipeline infrastructure expert Richard B. Kuprewicz said to Dakota Media Group. “They might have been trying to hurry.”
Joye Braun, of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe (one of those still engaged in a legal battle to shut down the pipeline), cited Kuprewicz when explaining why the news was so concerning.
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