Based on the actions of the protesters in North Dakota, you would think that the Dakota Access Pipeline is a groundbreaking engineering achievement and will be the first time a pipeline has ever crossed a body of water, ever.
But as the popular North Dakota SayAnythingBlog pointed out earlier today, this is hardly the case.
Here is a map that shows all of the liquid and gas pipelines criss-crossing the country today. As it shows, quite a few of them cross bodies of water including rivers, lakes, and even the ocean.
As Chairwoman Fedorchak said, nobody wants to contaminate the water supply. It isn’t the goal of a pipeline company to build a bad piece of infrastructure that will have problems. In fact, safety is the utmost priority when it comes to building pipeline infrastructure, which is why Dakota Access is such a thoroughly engineered project that used state-of-the-art technology to construct and maintain the pipeline. But this pipeline is not groundbreaking when it comes to engineering a water crossing. Many have come before it, and undoubtedly many will come after it.
This is about a bigger issue, these groups advocate a radical “keep it in the ground” approach to American energy production which is not a feasible strategy when it comes to our energy independence. Our economy requires the resources of the Bakken and the Midwest will be served well by lower costs of energy, valuable manufacturing inputs, and thousands of jobs that this pipeline will provide.