A new oil pipeline may be crossing Iowa. The Dakota Access Pipeline is planned to cross 1,134 miles from North Dakota to Illinois. A total of 343 miles will run across Iowa, over 14 miles of which are planned to go through Story County.

The pipeline is planned to run from western North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois, where it will connect with other pipelines heading to the Gulf Coast, according to Energy Transfer, the company contracted to install the pipeline.

The pipeline comes in the wake of the Bakken Oil Boom, which began in 2006. The boom has sparked renewed debates about the fracking of oil and the hazards that it can cause.

In 2013 Taylor Brorby, graduate student in English, was traveling through the Bakken formation in western North Dakota, on a grant to help teach creative writing classes with English Professor Debra Marquart. 

Brorby is originally from the Bakken area, but left just before the boom happened. While he was traveling, Brorby saw for the first time what the boom was doing to the land he loved.

“Seeing it, in particular at night, the best analogy I can tell people is if people are religious and they know the Lake of Fire and the Book of Revelation, that looks like a pleasant summer cruise to me,” Brorby said. 

“When you drive through there, you’re used to the night sky and it being dark, but then you see flares flickering all around you. And eventually the scary thing is, you kind of get used to it.” 

The trip inspired Brorby to begin writing about what he saw in the Bakkan.

“I felt some sort of responsibility to share at least what I’m seeing and also what I knew before the boom,” Brorby said.

Along with his writing, Brorby has been traveling around the country, giving lectures about the dangers of fracking.

“The only place I haven’t been able to get an invitation to is North Dakota,” Brorby said.

Brorby sees these lectures as not only a time to teach, but also a time to have conversations — a time to ask questions and really think about the issue. Brorby said that he thinks people have a mindset of “if you work on an issue, you must have an answer,” but he doesn’t think that is the case.

“I don’t fully know what [the answer] is because now that since the boom is going, when it stops we will have a new host of issues,” Brorby said. “I can tell you some of the negative sides to the boom, but the negatives of what we will see are, to my mind, going to be much worse over the long term.”

Brorby said the negative effects could include air pollution, water pollution, crop destruction and earthquakes.

Proponents of the pipeline look to the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster of 2013 for confirmation that the pipeline is a good thing.  On July 6, 2013, a rail car carrying crude oil from the Bakken derailed and exploded, killing 42 people. The pipeline will negate the uses of trains, and, the proponents argue, make it safer to move the oil. Also, without the oil taking up rail space, there will be more room for livestock to be transported by rail.

“I’d much rather have that crude running through a pipeline than filling up rail cars,” Charles Hoffman, rancher and former Republican legislator, told the Argus Leader.

In June 2014, Energy Transfer officials began talking with Iowa officials to set up a plan for installing the pipeline. In the plan, they assured officials the pipeline will be safe and agreed to pay a percentage of any damages that occur due to the pipeline — a promise that Brorby does not believe is possible to fulfill.

“The company that’s proposing to build this pipeline has only set aside $250,000 worth of insurance. That gives you a few acres to clean up, that’s not a lot of insurance that way,” Brorby said.

Along with their promise, Energy Transfer said that the pipeline would help stimulate Iowa’s economy and provide many jobs to Iowans. David Swenson, associate scientist in economics, said that is not entirely true.

“The numbers they used at first were very, very wrong,” Swenson said.

Out of the 7,600 jobs Energy Transfer says they will provide in a year, Swenson claims that only 3,800 will be provided. The pipes that they say will be manufactured in Iowa will really come from other states, Swenson said, because Iowa does not have any manufacturers who make the specialized pipes needed. Swenson believes many construction jobs will come from out of state as well because he says Iowa workers do not have recent enough experience to work on a project of this size.

Energy Transfer could not be reached for comments.

If the plans for the pipeline are approved, construction is scheduled to begin later this year — a time that Brorby believes Iowa is not prepared for.

“[The pipeline] will cross eight major watersheds, both the Missouri and the Mississippi [Rivers] will be crossed,” Brorby said.  “It will come right through Story County if this thing gets built.”

Brorby understands that not everyone is going to agree with what he says and he said that it is a good thing. He says that people can’t solely base their opinions on what they read in the news.

“Usually in my talks I say that there is a lot of grey area and implicate myself. Our food, our clothing, all of it comes from oil, so my hands are not clean,” Brorby said.

All final decisions about the pipeline will be made by the Iowa Utilities Board. If the pipeline is built, approximately 570,000 barrels of oil will be flowing through Iowa each day.

The pipeline is scheduled to be finished by late 2016.

Pipeline incident statistics.