SOURCE: New York Times
DATE: November 1, 2019
SNIP: The Keystone pipeline system, an addition to which has been the subject of environmental protests for years, leaked about 383,000 gallons of crude oil in North Dakota, covering an estimated half-acre of wetland, state environmental regulators said.
The spill, which has been contained, occurred in a low-gradient drainage area near the small town of Edinburg in northeast North Dakota, less than 50 miles from the Canadian border, according to Karl Rockeman, the director of the state Department of Environmental Quality’s division of water quality.
“It is one of the larger spills in the state,” he said in an email on Thursday.
There are no residences near the site and the wetland is not a source of drinking water, he said. State regulators and cleanup equipment are on site, but Mr. Rockeman could not say whether cleanup had begun.
The leak occurred along a stretch of the existing Keystone pipeline system, not the 1,179-mile-long addition to that system known as the Keystone XL pipeline, he said.
Catherine Collentine, an associate director with the Sierra Club, which opposes the Keystone XL addition, said in a statement that this week’s leak is further proof that such spills are inevitable.
“We don’t yet know the extent of the damage from this latest tar sands spill, but what we do know is that this is not the first time this pipeline has spilled toxic tar sands, and it won’t be the last,” she said. “We’ve always said it’s not a question of whether a pipeline will spill, but when, and once again TC Energy has made our case for us.”