Copyright © 2001 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

Hauling hazardous materials and the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide are causing increasing concern over the proposed expansion of the Dakota Minnesota & Eastern Railroad into western South Dakota and eastern Wyoming.

Maybe it's because the people living in those areas have a closer connection to Unci Maka, the Lakota words for Grandmother Earth. Maybe it's because relatively clean air and water still dominate the region. Maybe it's because bald eagles still live in the Cheyenne River Valley and float on the northwesterly air currents in their daily search for a meal or two, their flight not that unusual to cause people to remember that those of us who watch them are granted a special privilege as the numbers of eagles are dwindling and they are an endangered species.

Of approximately 100,000 human beings living in these two areas, how many are actively trying to stop the DM&E Railroad? Right now, the ones raising the most ruckus are ranchers and Native Americans, "Cowboys and Indians" to be politically correct. But that number is beginning to rise as more and more information is coming to light from scientists, engineers and environmentalists looking at the results if this proposed new track is completed.

The "Indians" have been raising concerns over hauling hazardous materials. These concerns escalated when the CEO for the railroad, Kevin Schieffer, refused to agree not to haul hazardous materials at a meeting between the Sioux tribes and the U.S. Surface Transportation Board. Saying this was a "scare tactic" being raised by the opponents of the railroad expansion project only caused his credibility to drop as the "scare tactic" is specifically written in the Executive Summary of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement prepared by the SIB on page ES-101.

The "scare tactic" states that the people of Red Shirt Village on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation need to have training in Hazardous Material Handling. All of a sudden, the new, wide-lane black-topped highway recently built, ironically across some at the last, pristine wild grasslands in the country, leads directly to Red Shirt Village and on to the location of a proposed solid waste dump site recently funded in the millions of dollars by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Does this portend, perhaps, the carrying of hazardous materials under the name of hazardous wastes? Possibly not, but then why a new dump site less than 20 miles from Red Shirt Village? Or does it have some relationship to the close proximity of zeolites, a mineral known to soak up radiation and abundant on the reservation? The Lakota people of the reservation have said "No" for years to any ideas of mining the mineral. It is too culturally inappropriate.

The question being asked by the "Indians" is "Why are the other cities and towns along this track in eastern South Dakota and Minnesota not worried about hazardous materials being hauled through their towns?" Surely hazardous materials will not just mushroom overnight in the pristine grasslands of the Cheyenne River Valley. They are going to have to be hauled in from points east. A bypass is not going to stop the spread of contamination to a much larger area should one of these trains tip over near Pierre or Brookings, S.D., or Mankato, Minn.

Are the Lakota people the only ones that will be exposed to hazardous materials? That reeks of racial genocide.

But the most recent projections take this whole issue out of the realm of the region and put it on a global scale. Mathematical calculations by respected scientists project that 1 percent of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be generated by burning the coal that will be hauled by this new railroad. The implications to a healthy balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere begins to faintly dawn, not to mention the effect on climate changes caused by global warming.

Will the temperatures on earth become hotter? It is not even a question of will the temperatures become hotter. That has and is continuing to be proved by respected scientists the world over. It is questions of how much hotter, how fast and how will the earth's plant life be able to adapt to such rapid increases. It is, after all, the plants that provide the basic food for all the rest of us walking around on this planet. The poor, defenseless, silently accepting, upstanding people who provide us with food, clothing and shelter, not to mention the very oxygen we breathe, will be the ones immediately affected by climate changes. How much longer will it take until the effects on plant life reach the rest of us?

As the "Cowboys and Indians" keep trying to tell more and more people about their concerns as they gather information and disperse it in the media and over the Internet, they are also learning new acronyms such as NEPA and DEIS and CO2 emissions. Understanding this new jargon is the weapon they must use in seeking protection for Grandmother Earth.

The close relationship and understanding they have of the natural processes of the earth, combined with federal environmental laws to stop the DM&E Railroad expansion, is the only way the global populations are going to be protected.

The concerns of the "Cowboys and the Indians" are no longer the concerns of a few thousand people but must be the concerns of the world community now that the long-term. effects have been studied.

Charmaine White Face is a freelance writer and a member of the Oglala Lakota Band of the Oceti Sakowin (Great Sioux Nation). Send comments to; P.O. Box 140, Manderson, South Dakota 57756 or send e-mail to; cwhiteface@aol.com.