Kandi Mossett from the Indigenous Environmental Network writes:
Evictions, Price Gouging, Natural Gas Burn-off, Crumbling Infrastructure, and Death: The energy boom is not progress, it’s waste and extreme violations of human and environmental rights!
Reading what I just did, I have to agree.
New Town, ND – Forced evictions, of local residents from their mobile homes in the New Town area, to provide housing for predominately out-of-state oil workers has reached a new low. On Monday, April 16th, Four Native American residents of the Prairie Winds Mobile Home Park, including a 9-year old child, were forced to leave their home when landlord, Leroy Olsen, removed Heather Youngbird and Crystal Deegan’s front door. Olsen then cut the electricity and turned off the propane to the home, and told them they had to leave their home immediately.
...
The battle for housing in North Dakota has been an on-going struggle since the onset of the oil boom in the Bakken Shale Oil Formation, which partially lies in northwestern North Dakota.
The housing crisis has been growing exponentially worse, particularly within the million-acre Fort Berthold Indian Reservation; homeland of the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara tribal nations.
Seems to be the same thing around the world:
Who Is Prospering?
It’s estimated that the state of North Dakota, to date, has collected at least $100 million as a result of the oil boom through revenue generated from Fort Berthold alone, while the majority of Fort Berthold residents haven’t seen a dime. In the meantime, roads are crumbling as semi-trucks take over with no regards for safety. Several deaths have occurred over the past few years as a result of accidents between the semis and local Native American residents; at least 6 of the deaths involved young people under the age of 27 with the youngest being 3 years old.
And can you believe this STUPIDITY :
Gas Flaring – Why are they burning it off?
A flare burning natural gas glimmers in front of a pumping unit north of New Town.
Additionally, within the Bakken shale formation hydraulic fracturing is being used to extract the oil but the natural gas is being flared off. A New York Times article points out that more than 100 million cubic feet of natural gas is being flared away every single day in North Dakota. That’s enough energy to heat half a million homes for a day. The flared gas also spews at least two million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, as much as 384,000 cars or a medium-size coal fired power plant would emit. Regulations on flaring are woefully inadequate as well in North Dakota and there are no current federal regulations on flaring for oil and gas wells.
Only to be toppled by that STUPIDITY :
Wind Has Taken a Back Seat to Oil
Perhaps the greatest irony is that North Dakota has the greatest wind resource of any of the lower 48 states. According to National Wind, LLC, “With all of its wind power a class 3 or higher, North Dakota could supply 1.2 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of annual electricity, which is 14,000 times the electricity consumption in the state.” Unfortunately, programs for wind power generation and distribution have recently been cut back within the state while the focus is on the extraction of the oil, with almost no regard to the human health impacts and environmental devastation occurring.
Followed up by this CRUELTY:
The Fight For Prairie Winds – Their Homes & Future
Residents of 45 trailers have until August 31st to move after the mobile home park was sold with plans to develop it to house oil workers. Future Housing LLC bought the property and plans to construct housing for employees of United Prairie Cooperative, formerly Cenex of New Town. ...
John Reese, the CEO and general manager of United Prairie Cooperative and agent for Future Housing LLC, said in an interview last month the housing shortage in the area makes it difficult for him to find employees. ...
“I’m just fine with taking the rock beating,” Reese said. Indeed John Reese has proved that he’s fine with displacing people because this isn’t the first time he’s done it. In 2010 he displaced people from the Four Corners trailer court behind the old Charbee’s and the second time he displaced people from the old movie theater apartments on main street. Tribal members are still paying back loans they had to take from the tribe to help pay for the moving expenses.
These are
African conditions, in my mind.