TransCanada: Don't Worry, We're Testing Our Own Pipeline

The South Dakota corporate media continue to shrug at the Welspun-TransCanada story. Over a week has passed since Plains Justice alerted us the possibility that the now operational Keystone pipeline may contain defective steel from Indian pipemaker Welspun Corp Ltd. and called for inspections of the Keystone line before it goes all BP on the prairie. No one in the local mainstream press—not KELO, not the Rapid City Journal, not that Sioux Falls paper, not even hard-working journalist Bob Mercer—has found a moment to address this possible threat to our environment and our economy. The only professional peep I've heard from the South Dakota press was in this KJAM report.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is on the story. The Keystone pipeline runs just north of St. Louis to the big ConocoPhilips Wood River, Illinois, refinery where TransCanada opened the Keystone taps last week. Reporter Phillip O'Connor learns that TransCanada hasn't had time to review the Plains Justice report (although O'Connor found time to do so before filing his story):

TransCanada officials said they had not reviewed the Plains Justice report but offered assurances the pipeline was safe. They noted that TransCanada's contracts with mills outline specifications above industry standards, and the company reviews manufacturing processes and quality control tests conducted by the suppliers. In addition, the company performs its own quality assurance checks after manufacturing.

"Our pipeline has been fully tested, and it is safe," spokesman Terry Cunha said [Phillip O'Connor, "Group Fears Leaks in New Oil Pipeline," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 2010.07.03].

I don't think TransCanada gets it. Kinder Morgan had pretty specific contracts with Welspun, too, telling them the standards the steel for their pipelines needed to meet. Kinder Morgan has quality assurance measures. Kinder Morgan still got defective steel that federal inspectors documented in their pipelines. Kinder Morgan is now suing Welspun.

If the Keystone pipeline were a Toyota, we'd be pulling it off the road for a recall inspection. And our local media would be all over the story.

TransCanada does assure us that they're already conducting the tests Plains Justice is asking for:

TransCanada officials said they already are conducting the tests that Plains Justice is requesting at the directive of federal pipeline safety officials. The company has tested about 40 percent of the line and expects to complete the work by the end of August.

No anomalies have been found, said Jesse Bajnok, a Keystone project engineer. The pipeline is not yet operating at full capacity and will continue to operate well below maximum pressure until all testing is completed, Bajnok said [Phillips, 2010].

I certainly hope TransCanada finds the pipeline is solid... and I certainly hope we'll have available some sort of independent confirmation from federal inspectors. One local official in St. Charles County expresses his concern that a Keystone rupture along the Missouri or Mississippi River could be worse than the BP Gulf spill in terms if immediate effect on surrounding states.

I'd like to believe that TransCanada is as interested in preventing a pipeline blowout as we neighbors of the pipeline are. A Keystone leak would be as bad for TransCanada economically as it would be for Missouri or South Dakota environmentally.

But just two months ago, TransCanada gave Welspun an award for all the fine work Welspun did for them in 2008 and 2009. This just one year after federal regulators issued an advisory warning operators of Welspun's defective steel. Can TransCanada really be so blind to the shoddy performance of a business partner?

Welspun Corp Ltd. responded to TransCanada's praise thus:

"We sincerely thank our customers and partners for the confidence they have shown in our company and products," said Lauri Malkki, CEO of Welspun Corp Ltd. "We have demonstrated how Welspun can cooperatively serve its customers by supplying products from multiple sources with quality and capabilities unmatched in the industry. We are committed to building on this success and expanding our business in and around North America" [no author cited, "Welspun Will Increase Little Rock Employment by 230 Jobs," Magnolia (Arkansas) Reporter, 2010.05.03].

Right... that's why your customers are suing you over bad steel.

----------------------------------------
Related: Rep. Henry Waxman of California is urging the State Department to deny TransCanada a permit to build its Keystone XL pipeline.

Also related: In a July 2 letter to the State Department urging the same rejection of Keystone XL, Plains Justice and 12 other public-interest organizations document four pipeline spills on U.S. soil in just the first six months of this year. The letter proceeds to address serious flaws in the Keystone XL environmental impact review and highlight the threat posed by the proposed pipeline to the Nebraska Sand Hills and other sensitive ecosystems.

Help Business: Pass Carbon Caps Now!

Yesterday I mentioned Rebecca Terk's cogent explanation of how clear regulation of homemade food helps micro-business by making the marketplace predictable for home-based entrepreneurs. I drew a parenthetical analogy with the passage of energy security legislation: get the Senate off its duff to set clear national policy for renewable energy and the cost of carbon emission, and industry will finally know where to invest in long-term energy plans.

Then David Leonhardt makes exactly the same point in his NYT essay on how Congress can boost growth and stave off the dreaded double-dip recession. He notes that health insurance reform and financial reform are already helping businesses make decisions.

One big piece of uncertainty remains, though: energy. Several energy chief executives have said they have major projects ready to go, if only they knew what was going to happen to the cost of emitting carbon. The same is no doubt true of nonenergy companies trying to make decisions about new buildings and factories.

The Senate still has a small window to pass an energy bill this summer. A good bill would include a cap on power plant emissions, making clear how much more expensive those emissions would become. Such a bill wouldn’t help only the climate, as Jim Rogers of Duke Energy says. It would be a form of stimulus, too [David Leonhardt, "5 Ways Congress Can Bolster Growth," New York Times, 2010.07.06].

As I've said, and as my friends at Repower America have said, let's finish the job on energy security legislation so the marketplace can get to work. Senator Tim Johnson knows energy security legislation will be good for South Dakota—he said so at the Heartland open house yesterday (I'll buy an ice cream cone for the first person who can send me a photo of Russell Olson applauding those lines!). Unfortunately, Johnson also said cap and trade won't pass the Senate—nertz! Time to swing the big stick, Senator Johnson, get your colleagues on board, and pass some energy legislation to help the environment and the economy!

-------------------
Related: Senator Johnson told the nice people at the Heartland shindig yesterday that energy security legislation will promote the production of low-cost electricity. Matt McGovern of Repower America agrees: he tells KJAM that reports of the impending demise of your pocketbook due to green energy are greatly exaggerated... by the oil industry and corporate interests determined to squeeze every dollar they can from an outdated, unsustainable energy business model.

Also Related: The Obama Administration is following through on a campaign promise to clean up the air in the eastern U.S. Per direction of the courts, the EPA is issuing a revamped version of the Clean Air Interstate Rule (originally proposed by that crazy socialist greenie and destroyer of the economy President George W. Bush) to require coal-fired plants east of the Mississippi to drastically reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions by 2014. The plan includes pollution credit trading.

Use Less Oil: Bring Your Own Bag

Some morning numbers to consider before you head to JubiShine for your weekly provisions:

1. Oil spilled so far by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil wreck: over two million barrels.
2. Conservative estimate of oil that would gush out of that well in one year: 13 million barrels.
   
3. Oil necessary to produce the 380 billion plastic shopping bags Americans use each year: 39 million barrels.
   

Consider: if we all took our cloth bags and backpacks to the grocery store and eliminated single-use plastic bags, we would wipe out demand for three Gulf oil wells. Or if you just told the kid bagging your groceries that it's o.k. to put your bread and your soap in the same bag, the resulting one-third reduction in plastic bags could completely offset one Deepwater Horizon gusher. Plus, cloth bags hold a lot more stuff!

Of course, no technology comes without a cost. Reusable cloth bags been shown to carry bacteria, yeast, and mold. (I dread what might lurk at the bottom of my 15-year-old backpack). That particular study was funded by the Canadian Plastics Industry Association, but it still can't hurt to toss your cloth shopping bags in the wash every now and then.

My neighbor Bonnie Funk makes some nice cloth shopping bags. Look her up, give her a call, see if she can stitch one up for you.

Or you could get creative and order this humdinger from Japan....

Local Marketing 101: Put People in Photos

Reimagine Rural gets me thinking, as usual. Morgan Andenas writes about the importance of including people in your local promotional photos. Putting photos of buildings and landscapes with no people can leave the impression that you're promoting a ghost town, says Andenas (who also cites Becky McCray of the rural/small-town development blog Small Biz Survival).

Naturally, I get to wondering how Madison does on this score. Let's take a look!

Here are the banner images I find this morning on MadisonSD.com, the promotional website owned and operated by local Infotech Solutions, one tentacle of local marketing specialists Bulldog Media Group:


Of the eight images on the main and top-level pages, three include people. Only one photo, on the Education page, shows a person in an identifiable local context. Even in that photo, the comely young woman is far to the left, separated from the DSU Tunheim Building by a big dark tree. That photo leaves me with a sense of detachment, or a sense that the photographer was more interested in graphic composition than storytelling.

The photo of the kids tubing is nice, but it could be anywhere: Lake Herman, the Missouri River, Key West.... The piggyback photo could be from any old inspirational calendar (although I'll admit it's pretty awesome that Bulldog Media got Daniel Craig to pose for a photo.. or is that Ed Harris?).

Now I wonder: do pelicans count as people? If they don't, the majority of MadisonSD.com's photos fail the people-storytelling criterion posited by Andenas and McCray.

I turn to the Lake Area Improvement Corporation, expecting to find a barren wasteland of deserted buildings. But surprise! unlike the LAIC's TIF District house, many photos on MadisonWorks.com have people in them.


Six of the nine banner images on the LAIC website clearly show people, some of them even clearly identifiable as authentic local residents. The exercisers in the Community Center look a bit like ghosts in the machine of the weight room, but they're there. We might even add the Prostrollo's shot as a seventh people picture... although if there are people in that photo, they are tiny dots, dwarfed by the commercial beast (which is metaphorically appropriate for Lake County's monopoly new-car dealer).

Let's not fall prey to Madison's obsession with marketing: even the most spectacular and well-peopled photos won't end the recession and create jobs. But some authentic shots with actual residents, like a number of the pix on the LAIC website, can make your town look like something more vibrant and inviting than a ghost town.

Graham: Tea Party Incoherent, Will Die Out

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina agrees with me that the tea "party" is sound and fury signifying nothing:

On four occasions, Graham met with Tea Party groups. The first, in his Senate office, was “very, very contentious,” he recalled. During a later meeting, in Charleston, Graham said he challenged them: “ ‘What do you want to do? You take back your country — and do what with it?’ . . . Everybody went from being kind of hostile to just dead silent.”

In a previous conversation, Graham told me: “The problem with the Tea Party, I think it’s just unsustainable because they can never come up with a coherent vision for governing the country. It will die out” [Robert Draper, "Lindsey Graham: This Year's Maverick," New York Times Magazine, 2010.07.04].

I said last week that the teabaggers have "no coherent plan for practical governance." If I didn't know better, I'd think Senator Graham was reading the blog.

But Graham is right: inchoate rage does not a political party or an agenda make. The tea "party" couldn't stop health insurance reform. It certainly didn't put candidates or questions on the South Dakota ballot. It has nothing to say about the BP oil disaster. It hasn't manifested itself as anything other than media-driven reinforcement of the Republican status quo.

Thank you, Senator Graham, for calling it as you see it.

-------------------------
Update 2010.07.07 10:28 CDT: The most passionate South Dakota teabaggers, Citizens for Liberty, can't even stop government regulation in their own backyards. Barb Lindberg told me last winter she and her patriotic Black Hills neighbors were waging war against an abusive, extreme environmentalist, hoax-based septic tank regulation proposed by the Pennington County Commission. Said septic regulation passed unanimously Tuesday. The tea "party" fail continues....

Food Rules: Garden Guru Explains Need for Labels and Regulation

Political discussion erupted last Friday at the South Dakota Magazine Editor's Notebook. Bernie Hunhoff mentioned "brouhaha" over the new labeling rules for homemade food at farmers markets, and he got brouhaha in the comment section. Commenters went ape over "ridiculous rules" and "government growth" and "nitpicking."

Fortunately, committed gardener and local foods booster Rebecca Terk was available to discuss the issue in depth. In the comments at SDM and on her Flying Tomato Farms blog, she showed that the new rules are not some simple black-and-white issue for hot-button rhetoric about big government. Rather, House Bill 1222 is the product of conscientious and cooperative effort among producers, Dakota Rural Action, and state officials to find the proper balance between protecting consumers and promoting local commerce. Terk makes clear that local commerce can't run on the selfish "we should do whatever we want" fantasies of the armchair libertarians among us.

Saying that farmers markets should be entirely unregulated is kind of like saying that the little cafes in small towns should be unregulated–they’re only serving regulars, after all–everybody knows them.

But we all know that the little guys (and gals) in rural South Dakota have been a long time at the brink of drying up and blowing away–especially as our farms continue to swallow each other up and our rural populations continue to dwindle.

If we have an insular attitude about how we’re only going to do business with people we know–we’re only going to serve our “regulars,” we’re not going to grow–sustainably or otherwise–and we’re continually sitting on that ever-finer line between making it and not.

We need to be willing to step up and take responsibility for the safety of our products if we want to market to a broader audience. If you want to barter your homemade cheese for your neighbor’s homemade jelly, fine. If you want to walk out into the marketplace and sell to the public, that’s a different thing [Rebecca Terk, "In Defense of 1222," Flying Tomato Farms, 2010.07.02].

Commerce is about community. It requires responsibilities and clear rules. When government establishes clear rules, as South Dakota's Legislature is doing with HB 1222, it removes uncertainty from the marketplace and encourages businesses to invest and produce and sell, sell, sell. (Hmmm... just like how big utilities and other industries would create a green-jobs boom if the Senate would quit dinking around and pass climate change and energy security legislation!)

Heidelberger Writhes in Crushing Grip of Blanchardian Rhetoric

Ken Blanchard likes to make my life difficult. Saturday the good professor tweaked me (with ever-amusing graphics), fusing me with Steve Hildebrand and other Weiland Wildcats to depict us Dems as double-dealing opportunists (o.k., I overstate, but the phrase was fun!).

The good professor has a point. Place my commentary about Stephanie Herseth Sandlin's recognized ability to check Speaker Pelosi's power alongside my previous criticism of SHS's Blue Dog votes on big issues and my promotion of the all-too-brief Weiland campaign, and I do sound a bit hypocritical.

No more so, though, than in 2008 when my man Dennis Kucinich dropped out and I had to swing behind the all-too-centrist Barack Hussein Obama. No more so than Clinton people who switched to Hope and Change after their gal's last great and fruitless victory in South Dakota, or the Huckabee/Romney/Giuliani people who got behind McCain-Palin. No more so than Dr. Blanchard himself, who was able to look past lots of differences with McCain to deem him preferable to the alternative. And certainly no more so than the Nelson and Curd people (including Curd's former campaign manager) who are now beating the Noem drum.

Dr. Blanchard's mirthful criticism plagues me nonetheless, and to stave off further tossing and turning, I must elaborate: Yes, after all my criticism of Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, I am 95% certain that I will check her name on the November ballot. In encouraging my neighbors to do the same, I will step occasionally out of my Wellstone waders, try on my good-neighbor galoshes, and muck about in others' worldviews. My Friday post on SHS's pull with Pelosi is not an endorsement or criticism on my part of SHS's voting record—I still think the big votes where she bucked the Speaker and the Dem majority were bad, bad, bad. The point of my Friday post was to cite specific evidence that counters the Noem narrative that equates SHS with Pelosi in a fallacious effort to make the election about someone other than the women on the ballot.

I can point out that Noem's rhetoric is wrong without being a Herseth true believer, just as I can point out the contradiction between religion and patriotism without going to church on Sunday.

But I will still have lots of 'splainin' to do... as the good Dr. Blanchard will so persistently, pesteringly, and perfectly appropriately remind me.

Minor Malpractice: KELO "Promotes" Grassroots with Top-Down Report

Minor journalistic malpractice: KELO does a story on the good work neighborhood associations can do to address specific local concerns within the big city of Sioux Falls. They mention the Whittier Resident Association, which erstwhile-blogging neighbor April Schave has discussed here on the Madville Times.

But does KELO actually visit with any of the good folk from Whittier to find out what they've done to make their neighborhood a better place or get tips on how to start and sustain a neighborhood association? Alas, no. They do the easy journalism, talking only with city officials Erica Beck and Darrin Smith. To their credit, Beck and Smith are encouraging local folks to start their own associations. But instead of directing folks to go to the center and contact the city planning department, the report would be that much better if it linked to the Whittier Resident Association so other residents could get info straight from the horse's mouth.

Year of Unity Note: Remember the Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians

Pierre has been putting out press releases promoting the "Year of Unity" declared by Governor Rounds to revive the reconciliation process started by Governor Mickelson in 1990. The latest notes Eagle Butte's upcoming Centennial celebration and Hometown Days July 15–18.

Perhaps the Year of Unity notes from Pierre are focusing on positive things happening now that can bring whites and Indians together. But unity also requires a shared understanding of our complete history, of the actions and abuses that made us the peoples we are.

Consider, for instance, the Hiawatha Asylum for Insane Indians in Canton, South Dakota.

The federal government authorized this facility in 1899. It took its first inmate on December 31, 1902. In its thirty-year history, the asylum racked up a litany of atrocities.

The facility was run first by political appointee, former Canton mayor, and former South Dakota Congressman Oscar Gifford. Having no background in health care or mental illness, Gifford got the nod from the Bureau of Indian Affairs because he arranged the acquisition of the land for the asylum. Gifford was replaced amidst a scandal over patient Lizzie Vipont's becoming pregnant.

Gifford's replacement, Dr. Harry R. Hummer, was no improvement. He starved the patients while his wife secured more rations for his family. He didn't hire staff with formal medical training until the 1920s.

Souvenir spoon and plate from the Hiawatha Asylum. See also this postcard.
Photos provided by my neighbor and local historian John Hess, who wrote a great essay on the Canton asylum for the July 2009 Heritage Herald newsletter of the Lake County Historical Society.

Many patients had no mental illness. Some were essentially political prisoners, shipped off to Canton for making trouble on their home reservations. Patients were physically, emotionally, and sexually abused. Cells had no furnishings, no electricity, no plumbing, just overflowing, untended chamberpots. An inspection by Dr. Samuel Silk from St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C. found the following appalling conditions:

Patients were found poorly clothed. Many of them were tied to their beds or found handcuffed to pipes or radiators. One woman was found lying in mounds of her own feces infested with maggots. Yet another was found gagged inside a locked room. Those that were coherent attempted to escape or tried to fight for their release by writing to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs only to have their requests dismissed when Dr. Hummer stepped in and made up a good excuse for their continued committal.

Hospital equipment was not used appropriately or at all. The surgery built in the separate hospital building was used for coal storage. TB patients were not sequestered, nor were their utensils or clothing sterilized as required. Menus were not kept but the food served to Dr. Silk was barely edible for animal consumption, let alone human consumption, and was described in its grisly detail in his report ["A Brief History of the Hiawatha Asylum," Hiawatha Foundation, last updated 2009.09.12].

The City of Canton saw the asylum as an economic development tool. Dr. Hummer happily advertised the asylum as a vacation destination, a place to "come see the crazy Indians." The asylum generated $40,000 a year in revenue for the city and provided numerous local jobs. In 1933, new Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier declared the "institution was so outrageously cruel and injurious that we would deserve to be blown out of the water if we continued it." But when the commissioner moved to end those outrages and close the asylum, the City of Canton went to court to keep their federal pork, arguing it was wrong to take federal jobs away in the midst of the Depression. The city also enlisted area tribal members to fight to keep the asylum open: the Rosebud Sioux, for instance, did not want inmates from their tribe transferred even farther from home.

Uncle Sam transferred the inmates out of the Hiawatha Asylum in December 1933. Seventy patients were sent to St. Elizabeth's in Washington, D.C. Twenty-seven inmates were deemed not insane and released. The government officially closed the facility in 1934. Of the horrific conditions that led to the asylum's closure, the City of Canton's official history says only that "Federal reports and assessments cited mismanagement, mistreatment, politics and the economy as the reasons for the closure."

The facility housed 374 Native Americans from 50 tribes around the country. 121 died and were buried on the asylum grounds. The cemetery remains in the middle of the Hiawatha Country Club and Golf Course, between the fourth and fifth fairways.

The Augustana College School and Wheels and the old Norwegian Ski Hill both have state historical markers in the area. A historical marker for the old asylum and the 121 Native Americans buried on the grounds would be an appropriate Year of Unity gesture.

-----------------------------------
Read more:

1. Elizabeth Stawicki, "A Haunting Legacy: Canton Insane Asylum for American Indians," Minnesota Public Radio, 1997.12.09
2. Friends of Hiawatha Project, maintaining Web archive and seeking to produce documentary. Also offering a large bibliography for serious historians.
   
3. Carla Joinson, Canton Asylum for Insane Indians: history blog and book project
   

Gun Intimidation Forces Wyoming Sales Tax Suspension

This is not how guns and democracy are supposed to go together: yahoos at Wyoming gun shows have caused the Wyoming Department of Revenue to suspend tax collections at gun shows:

Dan Noble, director of the department's excise tax division, said Friday that an incident at a gun show triggered the decision.

He added, however, that resistance from gun show sponsors and participants has been a recurring problem statewide.

"I have 10 field reps throughout the state, and every one of them has experienced some animosity," he said. "Folks are nervous anyway because there are guns there. I don't want to put my people at risk" [Joan Barron, "State Suspends Tax at Gun Shows," Casper Star-Tribune, 2010.07.04].

I stand corrected: I guess guns can check the government. Unfortunately, this check isn't on some previously untrammeled tyranny, but a perfectly lawful tax, the very sort of sales tax that some of my conservative friends think is the fairest tax of all.

The gun goonies cry that taxing their gun show sales infringes on their Second Amendment rights. If that's the case, then taxing my purchases of paper, pens, computers, and Internet service infringes on my First Amendment rights. Of course, even if I thought that argument might fly, I wouldn't use threats of gun violence to get my way; I'd just write letters to Secretary Kinsman and Senator Olson.

Democracy at the point of a gun isn't democracy. Wyoming gun nuts, man up, pay your taxes. And try settling your political differences without relying on the threat of force.

--------------------------
Update 12:06 CDT: conceivably related: reported assaults and threats against U.S. Census workers so far this year are more than double the number of such incidents in 2000.

Knee-High by the Fourth?

No problem.

Try bike-high.


David Pitts's corn, on 234th Street southwest of Madison, South Dakota. No corn was harmed in the taking of these pictures.

Update 2010.07.06: KELO one-ups me with six-foot-high corn.

Obama Stimulates South Dakota Small Town Broadband

We're not following Finland in declaring broadband a fundamental human right, but we're working on making universal access to the information superhighway a practical reality. On Friday, the Obama Administration announced an additional $800 million in stimulus dollars to boost 66 broadband projects nationwide.

Two South Dakota outfits get a piece of this broadband stimulus pie:

1. Triotel Communications of Salem gets $12.3 million to lay fiber-optic cable (that's the fast stuff) to homes in Canova, Alexandria, Emery, Farmer, Salem, and Spencer. Triotel says the project may benefit over 4000 people, just about 1000 businesses, and 100 community institutions. Interestingly, Triotel's homepage features a banner link calling on us to oppose the FCC's National Broadband Plan... apparently based on the plan's setting rural braodband standards 25 times slower than national standards.
2. Highmore-based Venture Communications gets $5.2 million (to be supplemented with $1.7M in private capital) to run fiber to homes and businesses in Cresbard, Faulkton, and Orient. Over 2000 people and dozens of businesses and institutions stand to get faster Internet.

Among neighboring states, Iowa is living highest off the broadband stimulus hog, winning $69.8 million for six broadband projects. On an entirely unrelated note, these stimulus grants are administered in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, headed by Secretary and former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack.

But South Dakota's $17.5 million is no sneezable sum. Iowa and Montana were our only neighbors to get more of this broadband stimulus, and most of Montana's money is $15.5 million dedicated to building a fiber network everywhere on the Crow Reservation.

Of course, we all know that South Dakota's reliance on federal money is bad, bad, bad. When will Kristi Noem go to Salem and Highmore and tell them to send this Executive Branch pork back to Washington? Hmmm... maybe she can get some support for that argument from Wisconsin Democrat and chair of House Appropriations David Obey, who wants to cut $602 million from the total $7.2 billion of stimulus dollars targeted at broadband to offset war costs.