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Dakota Access Pipeline Company Misses Deadline to Plant 20,000 Trees Along Pipeline Route
Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, has missed its 2018 deadline to plant tens of thousands of trees along the pipeline's route, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.
The company was supposed to plant 20,000 trees along the pipeline's 359-mile route through North Dakota by the end of 2018, as per the terms of a September 2017 settlement with North Dakota's Public Service Commission. So far, it has planted only around 8,800.
The settlement came about because of two major complaints, The Associated Press reported in 2017:
- Energy Transfer Partners failed to adequately report the discovery of Native American artifacts along its route. The artifacts were not disturbed, but the company did not get permission from the commission for a route change.
- Regulators were concerned that the company had disturbed too many trees and improperly removed soil while laying pipe.
In the settlement, Energy Transfer Partners agreed to plant trees in soil conservation districts along the route and help write a "how-to" manual for handling the discovery of artifacts, but it did not have to pay a $15,000 fine or payment, as regulators originally proposed.
"This really is not as much about the monetary amount as it is about awareness and influencing future behavior," Commissioner Brian Kroshus said at the time.
Now, Energy Transfer Partners is relying on a provision in the settlement allowing it more time to plant the trees if it encounters difficulties. Perennial Environmental Services, the company Energy Transfer Partners hired to manage the tree planting, said it had run into the following problems:
- Equipment and staffing problems
- Poor conditions for planting
- A lack of landlords willing to have trees planted on their land
- An incident in which one soil conservation district refused any plantings because it didn't think the 15 tree species listed in the settlement were appropriate for the area
Perennial Environmental Services said soil conservation districts in six counties had committed to planting 16,800 trees in 2019 for a total of more than 25,500. Commission officials were not available for comment on whether or not they thought the delay was justified, The Associated Press reported.
The Dakota Access Pipeline sparked massive protests by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and their allies over concerns it would threaten the tribe's drinking water. The protests seemed to have been successful when the administration of former President Barack Obama denied a key permit for the project towards the end of 2016, but President Donald Trump signed an executive order greenlighting the pipeline early in his term.
Oil began flowing through the pipeline in June of 2017, which was projected to move around 520,000 barrels of oil a day along more than 1,000 miles through North Dakota to Illinois, NPR reported at the time.
Britain's Prince William interviewed famed broadcaster David Attenborough on Tuesday at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Switzerland.
During the sit-down, the 92-year-old naturalist advised the world leaders and business elite gathered in Davos this week that we must respect and protect the natural world, adding that the future of its survival—as well as humanity's survival—is in our hands.
Electric vehicle sales took off in 2018, with a record two million units sold around the world, according to a new Deloitte analysis.
What's more, the accounting firm predicts that another 21 million electric cars will be on the road globally over the next decade due to growing market demand for clean transportation, government subsidies, as well as bans on fossil fuel cars.
By Matthew Savoca
Plastic pollution in the world's oceans has become a global environmental crisis. Many people have seen images that seem to capture it, such as beaches carpeted with plastic trash or a seahorse gripping a cotton swab with its tail.
As a scientist researching marine plastic pollution, I thought I had seen a lot. Then, early in 2017, I heard from Alex Weber, a junior at Carmel High School in California.
Greenland is melting about four times faster than it was in 2003, a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found, a discovery with frightening implications for the pace and extent of future sea level rise.
"We're going to see faster and faster sea level rise for the foreseeable future," study lead author and Ohio State University geodynamics professor Dr. Michael Bevis said in a press release. "Once you hit that tipping point, the only question is: How severe does it get?"
Finally, some good news about the otherwise terrible partial government shutdown. A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration cannot issue permits to conduct seismic testing during the government impasse.
The Justice Department sought to delay—or stay—a motion filed by a range of coastal cities, businesses and conservation organizations that are suing the Trump administration over offshore oil drilling, Reuters reported. The department argued that it did not have the resources it needed to work on the case due to the shutdown.
Most people have heard of the Amazon, South America's famed rainforest and hub of biological diversity. Less well known, though no less critical, is the Pantanal, the world's largest tropical wetland.
Like the Amazon, the Pantanal is ecologically important and imperiled. Located primarily in Brazil, it also stretches into neighboring Bolivia and Paraguay. Covering an area larger than England at more than 70,000 square miles, the massive wetland provides irreplaceable ecosystem services that include the regulation of floodwaters, nutrient renewal, river flow for navigability, groundwater recharge and carbon sequestration. The wetland also supports the economies of the four South American states it covers.
By Andrea Germanos
Organizers said 35,000 people marched through the streets of the German capital on Saturday to say they're "fed up" with industrial agriculture and call for a transformation to a system that instead supports the welfare of the environment, animals and rural farmers.
EVs 101: Your Guide to Electric Vehicles
By Patrick Rogers
If you have ever considered making the switch to an environmentally friendly electric vehicle, don't drag your feet. Though EV prices are falling, and states are unveiling more and more public charging stations and plug-in-ready parking spots, the federal government is doing everything it can to slam the brakes on our progress away from gas-burning internal combustion engines. President Trump, likely pressured by his allies in the fossil fuel industry, has threatened to end the federal tax credits that have already helped put hundreds of thousands of EVs on the road—a move bound to harm not only our environment but our economy, too. After all, the manufacturing and sale of EVs, hybrids, and plug-in hybrids supported 197,000 jobs in 2017, according to the most recent U.S. Energy and Employment Report.