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Heroes

The Keystone oil spill is history repeating itself. And it'll happen again. And again.

On Thursday, Nov. 16, around 210,000 gallons of oil escaped from the Keystone pipeline in South Dakota.

The spill happened near the town of Amherst. TransCanada, the company that operates the pipeline, says they were able to shut down the system as soon as they saw a drop in the oil pressure, but by the time the spill was stopped, more than 5,000 barrels of oil had spilled onto the ground.

— (@)

Locals are worried that contamination could find its way into the local water supply.

This spill is especially notable because it's part of the same Keystone Pipeline System whose planned expansion, the Keystone XL, drew protests from environmentalists and local communities.

A meeting with the Nebraska Public Service Commission to discuss final approval of the project was scheduled for Monday, Nov. 20.

Oil spills can be devastating, and the new leak along the Keystone pipeline should be taken seriously.

But the fact is, this is not the first spill in 2017 nor is it the worst.

On Jan. 30, for instance, a road crew dug into an oil pipeline near Blue Ridge, Texas, spilling about 210,000 gallons. On April 25, a pipeline spilled about 1,050 gallons of oil and saltwater into a tributary of the Little Missouri River. And in October, a cracked pipeline southeast of Venice, Louisiana, spilled about 672,000 gallons into the Gulf of Mexico. These are just a handful of the spills this year.

The funny thing is, pipelines are actually relatively safe compared to transporting oil by train or tanker truck (although critics have pointed out that many pipelines are old, lack modern safety equipment, and are inconsistently inspected), but there are 2.5 million miles of these pipelines in the United States.

And though we are slowly increasing our production of renewable energy, America still runs very much on petroleum. The Keystone spill was not the first pipeline failure. It will probably not be the last.

This viral tweet about Thanksgiving and Native Americans deserves our attention.

A tweet that's gone viral days before Thanksgiving shows exactly why the indigenous communities of South Dakota didn't want oil pipelines on their lands.

"Just a reminder last year on Thanksgiving that Natives were being tortured with dogs, illegal scare tactics, being run over by angry white [people] all to protect our water," the tweet reads. "And this year on Thanksgiving they are now cleaning up 200,000 gallon oil spill on a South Dakota reservation."

— (@)

The tweet, published on Nov. 16 by user @lilnativeboy, has amassed over 100,000 likes and tens of thousands of retweets because of its powerful — and entirely sobering — message.

The tweet is referencing 2016 protests on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation that turned violent.

Last fall, indigenous demonstrators — or self-identified "water protectors" — rallied to protect the local land and water from construction on the 1,172-mile-long Dakota Access Pipeline. In November that year, when officials became agitated with their ongoing presence, the demonstrators were sprayed with water and tear gas in freezing cold weather. That same fall, security dogs reportedly bit protesters on multiple occasions.

— (@)

Between then and now, a lot has changed; most notably, an oil-friendly Trump administration took the reins in Washington, approving the final pipeline construction permit needed in February 2017.

Trump has opened the floodgates (so to speak) on a number of oil infrastructure projects; among them is the also controversial Keystone Pipeline, which is disrupting much of the same upper Midwest region as the Dakota Access.

One year later and with Thanksgiving upon us, demonstrators' fears and predictions have come true as the viral tweet alludes to.

Over 200,000 gallons of oil has leaked in South Dakota, Keystone pipeline creator TransCanada confirmed on Nov. 17. The leak, the largest in the state to date, follows another leak in April from the Dakota Access Pipeline that tainted the land with nearly 17,000 gallons.

"It is a below-ground pipeline, but some oil has surfaced above ground to the grass," Walsh said of the most recent environmental setback. "It will be a few days until they can excavate and get in borings to see if there is groundwater contamination."

A demonstrator protests Trump's executive order fast-tracking the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines in Los Angeles. Photo by Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images.

David Flute, Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate tribal chairman, said his community is "keeping a watchful eye and an open ear" in the wake of the leak, according to the CBC. There's a real possibility the spill could pollute the area's aquifer and waterways. "The concern is at a high level, but there is really nothing we can do," Flute said.

But there is something you can do now.

TransCanada has proposed an extension of its Keystone pipeline system into neighboring Nebraska — a decision being weighed now by the Nebraska Public Service Commission. A vote to accept or deny TransCanada's proposal is set for Monday, Nov. 20.

Many environmental and activist groups are rallying support in hopes of keeping the pipeline out of the Cornhusker State. MoveOn, for instance, is encouraging supporters to sign a petition to say "no" to the project.

"If this spill had happened along the proposed route in Nebraska, it would be absolutely devastating," Brian Jorde, a lawyer representing Nebraska landowners opposed to Keystone XL, told Reuters. "Their proposed route is within a mile of thousands of water wells."

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Heroes

Bizarre, technicolor aerial photographs show the real effects of industry.

They look like they belong in a modern art museum.

Photo from J Henry Fair, used with permission.

But this isn't an oil painting.

The kaleidoscope above is actually "red mud" waste from processing bauxite ore, the world's main source of aluminum.

For years, J Henry Fair, a photographer and activist, has been taking aerial photographs of industrial sites, capturing how humanity affects the numerous interlocking systems that make up our environment.

The images are surprising, thought-provoking, and even a little intense.

In Louisiana, that red mud is channeled to large, shallow pools like this one, where it slowly evaporates and dries out.

Photo from J Henry Fair, used with permission.

The mud can be highly alkaline and contain elements such as arsenic and mercury. Most of the time, the mud is kept contained, but an industrial accident in 2010 near Budapest, Hungary, sent more than a million cubic meters of toxic waste into the Marcal river.

In Canada, gigantic tanks hold millions of gallons of tar sand oil.

Photo from J Henry Fair, used with permission.

Once you extract oil sands, you need to "upgrade" it by removing particulate matter. This gigantic tank in Canada, seen from above, stores 400,000 to 500,000 barrels of oil. The inspection catch can be seen in the center.

This tank has rusted and been painted over multiple times, forming a shifting pattern of colors.

Photo from J Henry Fair, used with permission.

It looks like a close-up of an alien eye.

This is what it looks like when coal ash is diverted from the atmosphere and into water instead.

Photo from J Henry Fair, used with permission.

Coal provides about 30% of the United States' electricity. Filters and scrubbers can capture the ash and particulate matter produced by burning coal, preventing it from entering the atmosphere. But the pollution has to go somewhere. Much of it ends up in holding ponds instead.

This coal ash holding pond in Pennsylvania is the largest in the United States.

Photo from J Henry Fair, used with permission.

This pond is in Shippingport. It's a "high hazard" impoundment. If it failed, people could be in danger.

On the other side of the state, fracking fluid is collected in lined pits.

Photo from J Henry Fair, used with permission.

The fluid includes ground-up rock, lubricants, chemicals, and sometimes radioactive material from the fracked shale layer.

Fair notes that the overspray, seen at the top of the photo, is a regulatory violation. Any fluid that escapes could seep into the local water system.

This ochre-colored pattern is actually from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Photo from J Henry Fair, used with permission.

In this photo, light petroleum from the Deepwater Horizon accident lingers just below the ocean surface. Dispersant chemicals eventually broke up the surface spill, sinking it toward the ocean floor.

This is a picture of the tailings of a Swedish iron mine.

Photo from J Henry Fair, used with permission.

Fine waste material mixes with water and is pumped into impoundments, essentially large ponds or dams.

Finally, this emerald view is actually an impoundment at a pesticide factory.

Photo from J Henry Fair, used with permission.

Fair's flight services for all these striking images were provided by Lighthawk and Southwings.

These images show a side of our habits we don't often see.

We use the materials produced at these sites every day — aluminum cans, plastics, coal-powered electricity — but we've put great distance between the actual production and the consumer. Yet our effect is still present.

"Once you really know and accept the consequences of something, then you have to make a moral judgment," Fair says. The good news is that if you don't think it's worth it, it's not hard to change.

"We all feel a sense of futility. The questions are so big that we all feel like there's nothing I can do. But in fact, everything adds up. Everything matters," Fair says. It can be as simple as eating chicken instead of beef or buying a different brand of toilet paper.

Fair is turning the project into a book.

Titled "Industrial Scars," it's being published by Papadakis and features a foreword by Bill McKibben of 350.org. You can also find more of Fair's work on his website.

Photo from J Henry Fair, used with permission.

Watch the trailer for the book below:

When Tracy Robinson went to bed on Oct. 12, 2016, she thought about spending time on the water the next day, monitoring crab fisheries.

Unfortunately, that's not what the next day held in store.

At 1:13 on the morning of Oct. 13 (local time), the tugboat Nathan E. Stewart and its barge DBL 55 ran aground on a shallow underwater reef near Bella Bella on the central coast ofBritish Columbia, in the territory of the Heiltsuk First Nation.

Diesel spilled by the Nathan E. Stewart (top center) streams into the water. Image via Heiltsuk Nation, used with permission.

For hours, breaking waves slammed its hull up and down into the reef, ripping holes in its fuel and oil tanks. Just before 10 a.m., the tug sank, and upward of 27,000 gallons of marine diesel began leaking out into the sea.

Robinson was one of the first people on the scene of the spill.

Robinson in her boat, tending to containment booms. Image via Heiltsuk Nation, used with permission.

For the first 36 hours, everything was chaos. The private company that oversees oil spill cleanup on Canada's west coast had boats that could help — but they were 185miles and a full day's trip away. There were additional supplies and staff en route from Vancouver, but the small planes that flew them up the coast couldn't get out in bad weather for three days. In the absence of leadership, members of the local First Nation, the Heiltsuk, took to their boats and stepped in.

"My partner and I were out there just before 10, just after the tug sank," Robinson said. "There were Heiltsuk boats pushing on the barge to keep it off the rocks. We started grabbing boom and waited for other Heiltsuk members to come out with the absorbent noodle boom, just trying to stop the diesel from spewing into Gale Pass. That was all we had and all we could do."

Cleaning up diesel in cold seawater isn't easy, especially on B.C.'s wild, rugged central coast.

There are strong marine currents, big storms, and rocky coastlines that make it hard to create containment plans. There are a million places where diesel can pool. It sticks to low-hanging tree branches and tall sea grass; it adheres to rocky beaches at high tide, then streams out into deeper water when the tide retreats.

Containment booms, a popular means of keeping oil in place so it can be recovered, are basically useless there because the wave action forces the diesel over their tops or underneath. Over the last 30 days, currents and storms have caused the booms to fail again and again, sometimes even pulling them apart, scattering beaches with diesel-soaked padding and styrofoam pellets.

The remains of a containment boom on a beach near Gale Creek. Image via April Bencze/Heiltsuk Nation, used with permission.

The Heiltsuk understand these lands and waters better than anyone. They also know what a spill like this means for the area and the people who live there.

When the tug ran aground, it did so on Athlone Island, beside the mouth of a narrow marine passage named Gale Creek. Nicknamed the "breadbasket," it's a particularly important hunting, fishing, and harvesting ground for the Heiltsuk people; they harvest more than 25 different food species there, from cockles and clams to sockeye and coho salmon. The Heiltsuk sell some of their harvests through a small commercial fishery and keep the rest to feed their families.

Cleanup crews deploy absorbent pads to soak up diesel in Gale Creek. Image via Heiltsuk Nation, used with permission.

Robinson's family has a strong connection to Gale Creek. "My mom was a commercial clam digger for 20 years, and she worked there," she says. "Now I'm working on the water, and I was going to do my first clam fishery there this year. After the spill, we don't know when we'll be able to harvest there again."

A sea otter floats lazily in Gale Creek with the diesel sheen nearby. Image via Tavish Campbell/Heiltsuk Nation, used with permission.

A full month after the spill, there's finally a break in the weather long enough to start the process of dragging the tug off the reef and hoisting it on to a barge. Even that is slow-going and frustrating.

Once it is gone, many of the 200+ engineers and workers who've converged on Bella Bella will leave, and the Heiltsuk will be left to oversee the long process of recovery.

Cleanup crews collect soiled containment boom from the beach behind the Nathan E. Stewart wreck (top right). Image via Heiltsuk Nation, used with permission.

"When I was younger, my mom and I did a restorative justice program where we lived out in Gale Creek for a month," revealed Robinson, her voice breaking. "We had brought food, but we tried to eat as much as we could off the land. We ate mussels off the rocks, picked seaweed and sea asparagus off the beach. My mom pulled cedar bark, and we would weave baskets or cedar roses, trying to learn to live off the land. It was rejuvenating and brought back the culture in me. Now, I feel so lost and I feel so sorry for my kids. They’re never going to experience the full riches, the full amazingness of Gale Creek."

During the month the Nathan E. Stewart spent submerged off Bella Bella, Canada's federal government promised to implement changes that would make spill cleanup on British Columbia's central coast faster and simpler.

Prime Minister Trudeau's long-promised ban on oil tankers is guaranteed to come before the end of the year, and the Heiltsuk have asked him to make the announcement in Bella Bella. While those regulations are long overdue, they cannot fix the damage done here. The cultural, environmental, and psychological impacts of this spill will reverberate for a long time.

Robinson with family on the beach near Bella Bella. Image via Tracy Robinson, used with permission.

For Robinson, right now, being out on the water, helping however she can, is all she wants to do. "I was out on the water for 21 days straight with this spill. There's nowhere else I'd rather be," she said.

"I don't know what's going to happen when the tug is finally out of the water. I just know I'll be out there. The government says that our oil spill response system should be 'world-class.' But if anyone is world class right now, it’s the Heiltsuk."

A poignant reminder about the hard work skilled workers do.

True

Caleb Holloway didn’t plan on becoming a rig operator. He just wanted a good paycheck and a steady job.

After a string of odd jobs — working at a feed store, in hospital maintenance, and installing concrete — 22-year-old Caleb and his best friend applied on a whim for a job working on small offshore oil rigs. They were hired two weeks later and stationed on a little shallow-water rig called a "jack-up." It was hard work, but it paid well and Caleb excelled at it. Within two years, he'd switched companies and started working at Transocean on its flagship offshore rig, the Deepwater Horizon.

On this massive rig, Caleb found community with his fellow workers. Stationed together for 21 days at a time, they became a second family to each other.

Offshore drilling rigs similar to the Deepwater Horizon sit in the Gulf of Mexico. Image via Sara Francis/U.S. Coast Guard/Wikimedia Commons.

During his three years on the Deepwater Horizon, Caleb worked his way up from an entry-level job as a roustabout, to a member of the drilling crew. It was tough, challenging, skilled work.

Working as anything above an entry-level steward on an oil rig usually requires a diploma in welding, basic mechanics, or heavy equipment operations, plus specialized courses in marine firefighting and emergency response. Workers must be physically strong, highly-skilled natural problem-solvers — able to do their tough, essential jobs perfectly on a moving, floating deep-sea drilling platform in all kinds of bad weather and treacherous conditions.

"It’s a very dangerous job," Caleb said. "Everything on the rig is heavy; you’ve got multiple machines running and going in different directions. It’s a long job, and it can get to you sometimes. But I always think back to our crew and how we took care of each other. There wasn't a moment where I didn't trust them with my life."

Most of the time, there are extensive safety protocols in place to keep workers out of harm's way. Coupled with strong leaders empowering workers to speak up about problems, sometimes they make a big difference. Other times, they fail horribly.

On the morning of April 20, 2010, 10 members of the Deepwater Horizon’s drilling crew went to work. By midafternoon, only two of them were still alive. Caleb was one of them.

The Deepwater Horizon burns on August 20, 2010. Image via U.S. Coast Guard/Wikimedia Commons.

That day, the Deepwater Horizon was finishing up work on the deepest oil well ever drilled on our planet. The project was behind schedule and over budget. A chain of decisions, spurred largely by off-site executives wanting to save further money and time, led to a catastrophic explosion, a massive fire, and the largest oil spill in American history. Caleb and his colleague, Dan Barron, crawled through pitch darkness and aerosolized gas and fire to reach safety. On their way, they helped many others reach safety.

126 people were on board Deepwater Horizon before it sank. 115 were rescued. Of the 11 crew members who were not, eight were members of Caleb Holloway's drilling crew. It was only after he was safely back on shore that he began to understand that many of his close friends and coworkers weren't with him.

For six months afterward, Caleb could barely function.

Medications and counseling helped, but only bit by bit. Unable to eat or sleep, he lost 40 pounds off his already slim frame. He couldn't stop replaying the day over and over again in his head, imagining what he could have done differently and the additional lives he might have saved.

Until one day, he just couldn’t do that anymore.

Through the support of his family, his friends, and his bible study group, Caleb found the motivation to begin living again. Just over a year after the disaster, he signed up for firefighter training.

"Losing my friends on Deepwater Horizon felt like someone tore out my heart and ripped it into 11 pieces," he says, his voice catching. "There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t think of them. I wanted to go back to a rig because I loved that work, but I knew that mentally and emotionally I couldn’t do it."

For the last four years, Caleb's worked as a firefighter on the crew in Nacogdoches, Texas — just 20 minutes from where he grew up and minutes from his parent's house.

His shifts, like the ones he worked on the Deepwater Horizon, are long and tough: 24 hours on with 48 hours off. Caleb couldn't imagine being anywhere else.

He spends a full third of his life now in this fire hall, surrounded by men and women who, like his crew members back on the Deepwater Horizon, have become another second family. "We do something different every day, we impact lives every day," he says. "It’s something I’m proud of."

The Holloway family at home. Image via Participant/Deepwater Horizon.

For Caleb, being a firefighter bridges the gap with the work he did on the rigs, in a way, and the close relationships he had with his fellow workers, while allowing him to stay close to his growing family. That's something his wife Kristin and sons, Chase, age 4, and Hayden, 20 months, really appreciate. "They're the best thing that’s ever happened to me," Caleb says proudly. "They’re my heartbeats; they keep me going every day."

Caleb's experience is unique, heartbreaking, and life-affirming. But people like him put their lives on the line for their job every single day.

Image via Participant/Deepwater Horizon.

Mundane moments in our lives that we take for granted — that light comes on when we flick switches, that roads are safe to drive on, that toilets flush away dirty water and taps supply clean — occur because of skilled workers, some of whom risk their lives in potentially deadly situations just to make it happen. They're working quietly, doing the essential work that keeps our country running every day. While their work is often taken for granted, it's actually pretty incredible, too.

Watch a video of Caleb's story here:

This is Caleb Holloway. He survived the Deepwater Horizon and is now a firefighter in Texas. #workhard Participant Media
Posted by Mark Wahlberg on Friday, October 7, 2016

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Heroes

How BP not caring about their environment plan actually helped this environment.

No new oil rigs in Australia's whale nursery. At least, not yet.

True

A government regulator has put the kibosh on BP's plans to drill in the Great Australian Bight. At least, for a while that is.

But wait. Back up. What the heck is a bight?

The Great Australian Bight is this huge open bay off the southern coast of Australia. Lots of cliffs around it. Looks like this:

Some of the cliffs are over 60 meters tall. Wouldn't want to fall from that. Image by Takver/Flickr.

The oil giant wanted to put in four new exploratory wells here a little way off the coast. But their plan to protect the Bight against any ecological damage wasn't up to snuff, the government regulator said:

"After a thorough and rigorous assessment, NOPSEMA [the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority] has determined that the environment plan does not yet meet the criteria for acceptance under the environment regulations, and has advised BP of this decision."

You know that sinking feeling you get when you see "environment" and "BP" in the same sentence? Yeah, they had it too.

"After its Gulf of Mexico disaster, you would think BP would be at pains to demonstrate that it is going well above and beyond regulatory requirements to ensure its safety and environmental plans are the new standard of global best practice," said Wilderness Society South Australia director Peter Owen.

BP was, of course, the oil company responsible for the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010 that released 200 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. It was the worst marine oil spill ever, sledgehammering the Gulf's fishing and tourism industry.

The oil mucks up bird's feathers: They can't fly, they can't keep warm, and they can't keep dry after. It's pretty much a death sentence. GIF via Bloomberg Business/YouTube.

“It is very concerning that BP doesn't appear to be taking the potential risks drilling in our pristine oceans presents seriously at all," Owen continued.

Everyone raise their hands if they like non-oil-covered animals!

The Bight is an important sanctuary for many species. Whales live there — humpback whales, blue whales — it's even where many southern right whales come to give birth and raise their young. That's not to mention it's the home of sea lions, fish, seabirds, and countless other species.

How much would you pay to get that kind of view? GIF via Jaimen Hudson/YouTube.

And, oh yeah, humans live there too. For them, the coast brings in $442 million per year in fishing money and $1.2 billion in tourism.

BP may return. But we might be able to stop them.

According to NOPSEMA guidelines, BP now has the chance to edit and resubmit their plans. This is a crucial moment.

The Wilderness Society is calling for more donations to help them keep up their opposition. So far they've done some research and modeling and gathered signatures for a petition, but they've got more work ahead of them.

“It was only five years ago that BP caused one of the worst oil spills in history in the Gulf of Mexico," they said. "We won't let BP do the same to Australia."

Learn more about what you can do to support The Wilderness Society and keep BP out of this important natural sanctuary.

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