{"id":13023,"date":"2016-07-03T07:23:10","date_gmt":"2016-07-03T13:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=13023"},"modified":"2016-07-03T07:23:10","modified_gmt":"2016-07-03T13:23:10","slug":"opinion-five-years-later-thoughts-on-an-oil-spill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/07\/opinion-five-years-later-thoughts-on-an-oil-spill\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Five years later, thoughts on an oil spill"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Boat\"<\/a>

Joan Churchill<\/p>

An air boat on the Bonogofsky farm was part of cleanup efforts after the 2011 Exxon oil spill on the Yellowstone River.<\/p><\/div>\n

Early in the morning on July 2, 2011, I walked down the gravel road on our farm to let the goats\u00a0out to graze for the day. I found the Yellowstone River flowing through our hay fields and\u00a0summer pasture and, along with the water, an oily rainbow sheen and large clumps of crude oil\u00a0sticking to trees, cattails and brush. It was in our sloughs, our pond and Blue Creek.<\/p>\n

The smell\u00a0was overwhelming. I checked the news on my phone and found out that an Exxon oil pipeline had\u00a0ruptured underneath the Yellowstone River upstream from my family\u2019s farm. The article\u00a0instructed anyone impacted to call a 1-800 number.<\/p>\n

I called the number as I was standing thigh deep in oily water and listened to a\u00a0woman ask me\u00a0if we had property damage.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d I said, \u201cYes, there are damages.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end, over 63,000 gallons of crude oil spilled into the Yellowstone River from what I\u00a0learned later was a “guillotine cut” in the Exxon Silvertip pipeline that lay in a trench around five\u00a0feet beneath the Yellowstone River. During\u00a0heavy\u00a0flooding, the river bottom was\u00a0scoured away and the pipe became exposed. All it took was a heavy object being tossed down\u00a0the river to break the pipe in half. After spending $135 million dollars on the cleanup, Exxon\u00a0recovered less than 1 percent of the oil spilled.<\/p>\n

It took Exxon an hour to completely shut down the pipeline and almost three days to bring in a\u00a0cleanup crew. Federal investigators found that damage would have been reduced by about\u00a0two-thirds if the pipeline controllers in Houston had closed the appropriate valve as soon as a\u00a0problem was detected.<\/p>\n

I made one trip to the hospital with acute hydrocarbon exposure, along\u00a0with many other people who live along the river and, for one year after the spill, it hurt my lungs\u00a0to take a deep breath. We are on year five and countless hours of trying to rebuild our soil and\u00a0restore our pastures back to their original condition.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>After the spill, the state of Montana leaned on the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety\u00a0Administration (PHMSA) to inspect 90 pipeline river crossings in Montana. Twenty of those\u00a0crossings were deemed a high risk for failure and were either reburied with directional drilling or\u00a0strengthened.<\/p>\n

And yet, four years later, in January 2015, another oil pipeline burst underneath the\u00a0Yellowstone near Glendive. Sonar testing showed about 110 feet of pipeline was exposed along the bottom of\u00a0the river. In one area, river scour had removed almost an entire foot of dirt and rocks\u00a0underneath the pipe, leaving it completely exposed for 22 feet. During this “release”\u2014which is the\u00a0term that industry and government use to refer to oil spills\u2014over 42,000 gallons of oil spilled into\u00a0the Yellowstone River. People in Glendive began smelling oil in their tap water. No one in town\u00a0was told until more than 24 hours after the spill.<\/p>\n

This pipeline, according to the inspections undertaken by PHMSA after the 2011 spill, was\u00a0deemed a low-risk pipeline.<\/p>\n

When oil spills happen, not just those on the Yellowstone, I feel like I\u2019m living in the movie “Groundhog Day,” except I get to relive oil company executives and government officials saying\u00a0the same things about pipeline safety. \u201cWe need to learn from this,\u201d \u201cWe need to reexamine the\u00a0federal rules regarding depth of cover,\u201d \u201cThis is serious.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the media attention dissipates so\u00a0does the political will to do anything substantive about pipeline safety. Then another oil spill\u00a0happens and we throw up our hands.<\/p>\n

Here is what I know. In the past five years, two oil pipelines have spilled over 100,000 gallons of crude oil into the\u00a0longest free-flowing river in the lower 48 states. We know why the pipelines broke and\u00a0we know how to stop them from breaking in the future.<\/p>\n

\"Plant\"<\/a>

Alexis Bonogofsky<\/p>

Oil covers plants on the Bonogofsky farm on July 2, 2011.<\/p><\/div>\n

The federal government requires a minimum of only four feet of cover over pipelines in rivers\u00a0100 feet or wider and only at the time of installation. Crossing inspections are left up to pipeline\u00a0owners and required only once every five years.<\/p>\n

Anyone who knows the Yellowstone River\u00a0knows that it is constantly changing and re-channeling. It moves outward where it is able and\u00a0always downward, carving deep trenches in the river in many places, especially during spring\u00a0run-off and ice jams. Scour can push yards of river bed around in a single year, easily exposing\u00a0pipelines.<\/p>\n

Federal regulations do not take into consideration the very significant and unique challenges of\u00a0pipeline crossings in the Yellowstone River. And, the recently passed PIPES Act, sponsored by U.S.\u00a0Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and signed by President Obama, does some good things to\u00a0move the ball forward on pipeline safety and gives PHMSA some additional authority.<\/p>\n

But it does\u00a0not address the one thing that the Yellowstone River needs: all pipelines that run underneath\u00a0the river need to be directionally drilled deep under the river bottom so they aren\u2019t vulnerable to\u00a0river scour.<\/p>\n

Until this happens Montanans can expect that the two recent oil spills in the Yellowstone River\u00a0won\u2019t be the last.<\/p>\n

Alexis Bonogofsky is a fourth-generation Montanan, goat rancher and hunter who lives and works along the Yellowstone River near Billings.\u00a0She was awarded a Cultural Freedom\u00a0Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation in 2014 and is a board member of\u00a0the Pipeline Safety Trust.\u00a0She also managed the\u00a0Tribal Lands Partnerships Program for the National Wildlife Federation for 10 years. <\/em><\/p>\n

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Early in the morning on July 2, 2011, I walked down the gravel road on our farm to let the goats\u00a0out to graze for the day. I found the Yellowstone River flowing through our hay fields and\u00a0summer pasture and, along with the water, an oily rainbow sheen and large clumps of crude oil\u00a0sticking to trees, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":13024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3864],"tags":[1222,1978,4630,4632,4631,528,39],"class_list":["post-13023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-alexis-bonogofsky","tag-exxon","tag-oil-spill","tag-pipeline-and-hazardous-materials-safety-administration","tag-silvertip-pipeline","tag-steve-daines","tag-yellowstone-river","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}