Ask the Right Question
The following article was written by Larry Koehrsen, a graduate of Iowa State University with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering, who is now retired.
An Iowa wetland – many of which would be impacted by the proposed Bakken Pipeline
Oil is on the move. Supplies of oil are transported around the state, around the country, and around the world to fill our insatiable demands for energy.
Railroad tank cars full of crude oil and distillates are highly visibly moving through Iowa daily. Pipelines are less obvious, even though they are all around us. There are 41,410 miles of hazardous liquid and natural gas pipelines in the Iowa Department of Transportation database.
The tank car industry has been expanding (explosively) and is scrambling to catch up with demand. Government statistics show 21,200 barrels of oil moved each day by rail in 2009. By the end of 2014, this number had ballooned 50-fold to 1,040,000 barrels per day.
There have been four spectacular crashes of rail cars carrying crude oil since the first of the year. One of these was in our neighborhood, near Galena Illinois.
Escalation of railcar transport of oil has also reduced our capability to move Iowa’s grain harvest and ethanol production by rail.
On the pipeline front, two projects have been much in the news recently. President Obama vetoed a congressional initiative to move forward with the Keystone XL Pipeline. This is merely the latest action in the ongoing saga of this project.
Right in our backyard, a Texas-based group is attempting to gain approval for a pipeline to carry Bakken crude oil on a diagonal route across the state. The project, known as the Dakota Access Pipeline, is now before the Iowa Utilities Board and will be approved, or not, in coming months.
Opposition to Dakota Access includes construction issues; environmental damage to sensitive areas and streams, long-term damage to croplands, and disruption of farm tile lines. Also in questions is whether a private company should be able to condemn land to construct a private pipeline. Even more critical than construction questions are ongoing concerns about the health, environmental, and public safety impacts of pipeline leaks.
We seem to be locked in an endless debate regarding the alternative merits of oil transport via pipeline or by rail tanker.
Do trains have accidents causing tank cars to rupture, explode, and burn? Yes. Does pipeline construction cause environmental damage? Yes. Do pipelines leak? Yes. Which form of oil transport is best or worst? Wrong question.
Pipeline construction, pipeline leaks, and train crashes cause localized damage to people and the environment. The damages may be severe, even catastrophic, but they do disrupt a finite segment of the planet.
On the other hand, continued burning of fossil fuels drives climate change. Every person and every place in the world will see and feel results of climate change. The scope and sweep of changes resulting from continued burning of fossil fuels dwarfs the impact of even the worst pipeline rupture or railroad crash.
If we want to have fewer rail car crashes and disasters, we should burn less oil and therefore move less oil by rail. If we want to minimize pipeline construction impacts and reduce pipeline leaks, we should burn less oil and build fewer pipelines. If we want to stave off and reverse the impacts of climate change, we should burn less oil.
The answer seems obvious if you ask the right question.
Larry Koehrsen is a graduate of Iowa State University with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering. He worked in the consulting engineering business, focusing primarily on environmental issues and projects. He is now retired and lives in Ames. He can be reached at koehrsenl@gmail.com