It was about seven in the morning this Sunday when my house started shaking. I knew what it was, because I’d experienced the seismic wave of a far away earthquake once before. That was when I was a kid in 1959, when a huge quake occurred in Yellowstone National Park and the shock shook my parents house in Sheridan WY 250 miles away. But even though I was not confused about that ten second earth-spasming event, I was still alarmed. I have a nice home. I started to imagine the worse, something I do kind of regularly, but not in the way you might think. I don’t consider myself to be a pessimist. I simply like to analyze stuff and think ahead, something I took away from Boys Scouts long ago. Be prepared. Like, I just filled in a cavity in a small retaining wall in my back yard that a den of snakes was living it up in, and now I bet the timbers shifted around enough so those damn snakes will just make themselves at home back there once again. Or worse, what if somewhere a coupling on my natural gas line got loosened up and my house exploded. I guess at least that would take care of my fucking snake problem.
But here’s the thing. Yellowstone is a natural hotbed of seismic activity. There are thousands of earthquakes happening there every day. They are very natural phenomena. Takes a lot of pressure off the hydrothermal plumbing. Sunday’s quake was not a natural phenomenon. The center of that thing was in northern Oklahoma, a good 400 miles from where I live now in Omaha. Oklahoma too, has a lot of earthquakes, fifty or so a year. That wasn’t always the case. Used to be a couple a year, like most places in the midwest. What happened to Oklahoma is oil fracking. That’s not natural at all. The state of Oklahoma is our nation’s gold medal champion of human-induced earthquakes.
But there is a new contender emerging- North Dakota. Part of the Bakken Oil Field lies just underneath the western soil of about a third of that state. Bakken oil shale brought jobs and prosperity to North Dakota, and it brought a lot of misery and- fracking. You can find hundreds of articles written about the good and the bad about North Dakota’s oil boom. One of the best I’ve read is this one. https://placesjournal.org/article/dakota-is-everywhere/?gclid=CMqg7Lj5-M4CFQ-EaQodaAwNBQ It is really long. If you don’t have time to to read it, I feel compelled to point out one thing that caught my eye. Deep into this text is a conversation a rancher, Brenda Jorgenson, had with a state oil regulator. Brenda recalled a discussion the two of them had about the waste pit near the oil well on their land. He claimed that the plastic liner- the barrier between the toxic liquid in the pit and soil- would last for 40 years. When Ms. Jorgenson voiced concerns, the regulator’s reply was “You won’t be around after that anyway. What do you care what happens after you’re gone.”
I love the sate of North Dakota. I went to high school there. In my opinion it is getting raped by big oil. Again, just my opinion. But the bust is already occurring in a few western ND cities. The state of North Dakota, as well as you and I, can take heart though. There is at least one dedicated group out there trying to save us from ourselves- the Native Americans living on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. There is an oil pipeline under construction to carry oil from North Dakota to Illinois. The charted path of the pipeline runs along the reservation’s northern border at some point. Concerned about a future pipeline spill, and disruption of sacred tribal land, the people living on the reservation are protesting. They have brought construction to a halt and it is getting a little ugly. That’s about all you need to know, but in case you’re interested, here is more information.
Well, I guess there is another thing you should know. The pipeline as mapped is going to run under the Missouri River. What the fuck are these oil douchebags thinking? How catastrophic would a busted pipeline be if oil gushes into the Missouri River. I drink that water. It is a known fact there is little oversight of our already vast network of oil pipelines, and guess what is in all likelihood going to be consistently happening with all the fracking going on in North Dakota. It will be Oklahoma.2. You can bet all the shaking has the potential to wreck havoc with any kind of piece of shit pipeline. Geezuz these guys piss me off. To them everything is just fine because we are perfectly safe- for 40 years anyway.
Non-quake Reistant Structure Quake Resistant Structure