Kelley: Keystone pipeline work not essential

Don Kelley is a cool guy: as a fellow Kucinich watcher on a western South Dakota burro, windmills often become mutually quixotic destinations. The Vietnam-era former pathologist and nurse wife, Kim have built a small farm along one Black Hills elk migration route within prime mushroom habitat just off the Merritt Estes Road between US385 and the Nemo Road on the border of Pennington and Lawrence Counties. They have been part of Dakota Rural Action, Solarize South Dakota and off-grid builders for at least two decades.

Attorneys for the Trump Organization will stop at nothing to erase Barack Obama's legacy including accelerating the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, a warming climate and an eventual American Indian rebellion to protect treaty lands. But building the KXL pipeline will depress oil prices even more and anger Trump's handler, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Montana and North Dakota have both suffered the effects of man camps that prey on women and girls where rapes and murders committed by white walkers have become commonplace.

A recent federal court injunction bars water crossings by TC Energy, the Canadian company planning to build the KXL pipeline. Previously, in a late March press conference, Gov. Noem assured us that TC Energy would not build in the state during the COVID-19 outbreak, so the danger from imported work crews entering South Dakota during the pandemic seemed to be averted. However, sizable “pre-construction” work crews are indeed here, and active on the project. The distinction between “pre-construction” and “construction” means nothing when it comes to the possibility of virus dissemination in parts of our state where health care facilities are relatively sparse and easily overloaded. By working in groups, these crews pose a danger to themselves and to the local folks they deal with. When other non-essential workers are being encouraged or ordered to stay home throughout the nation, it is hard to see justification for this exception. This is one of those instances where public health is surely more important than the profits of a foreign corporation. [LTE, Don Kelley, M.D., Deadwood, SD]