For a limited time off to leaves next March by far the best outcome for the u.k. For Ireland and for the e.u. Is that offer to relationship is agreed and in place by the 1st of January 2021 I have every confidence that it will be and the European Union has said they were sure people commitment to this timetable but the un pass we are trying to resolve is about insurance policy if this does not happen the Zimbabwean authorities have begun an audit of the entire country's farmland in an effort to boost productivity and help the ailing economy to recover the chair of them Bob was land commission Tendai Barry said the exercise would identify underutilized land as well as individuals who had been allocated multiple farms she denied the exercise was a win witchhunt government critics have questioned whether any land would be taken from the political elite as a result of the current told it. 2 of the 6 critically endangered black rhinos that we've relocated in May from South Africa to Chad have died a wildlife charities at the male and female rhinos were not poached and the exact cause was not yet known they may have died as a result of a virus b.b.c. News. Hello and welcome I'm Renee Kemp sitting in for Rose Aguilar and this is your calls one Planet series today we're talking to author and investigative journalist Antonio you HA's her latest Pacific standard cover story is entitled Death on the Dakota access it's an investigation into the deadly business of building oil and gas pipelines for the 1st time you has has compiled detailed fatality rates for those who actually build us oil. And gas pipelines and her findings tell a very disturbing story about worker safety the lack of industry regulation and the environmental destruction that has followed the oil and gas boom here in the United States she goes back to 2016 when oil and gas pipeline construction workers were dying on the job on average more than 3 and a half times more often than the average American worker So why is that she writes about the new plan for us global fossil fuel dominance and she pairs those findings with the current trump policy that requires expanding and even fast tracking new drilling and pipeline construction and at the same time decreasing regulation and oversight you has is predicting that at this rate the United States is destined to increase the number of these workers on oil and gas pipeline construction who are either injured or who die on the job so how is this industry regulated and who takes care of these workers to look into these issues we're joined in studio by Antonia and she's a long time oil and energy investigative journalist in fact and I don't think anybody knows more about this industry than Antonio She's author of 3 books most recently. The title Black Tide and it deals with the devastating impact of the Gulf oil spill so so good to have you back Antonia thanks so much for having me Renee great to be with you yes indeed and again you've dedicated your career to looking at but the oil and gas industry and before we get into the most recent research that you've done you did in black tide a look at the Deepwater Horizon back in 2010 that explosion and fire killed 11 people on that platform in the Gulf of Mexico and you said that you went into a submarine and actually took a look at the environmental damage and so what did you learn from from that experience yes so. The Deepwater Horizon disaster happened in 2010 or the initial explosion happened in April 2010 and that was and remains the worst offshore drilling. Explosion in history the worst offshore drilling oil and gas incident in in world history the largest amount of oil spilled and it included the death of 11 workers on the rig and there were many lessons that I learned from that ongoing investigation and not only did I write the book Black tie but continued to return again and again reporting from magazines like Rolling Stone and Harper's magazine and the nation to continue to return and see what continues to happen in the Gulf the impacts on the families of those who lost loved ones and workers who were on the rig of the time of the disaster and on the environment and on the economies of the Gulf of Mexico and one of the lessons was that taught by the judge who ruled in the case finally against b.p. Saying that they. Unquestionably put profit ahead of all other concerns and we're pushing to save time and to save money and that seems obvious after the fact but of course while these operations are under way we're always told these are the wealthiest companies on the planet of course they're doing everything they can to protect their workers of course are doing everything they can to protect the environment and we're told that that's what we should expect but then when these disasters happen it's like we're also then told to just expect oh yes of course they're trying to save money of course aren't trying to save time and of course that results in often the death of workers and destruction of the environment and the Gulf of Mexico when I was in this sub that you had mentioned I was in the Alvin submarine it's the last research submarine dedicated to research for ocean scientists and I was with Dr Samantha Joye and this was a couple of years after the disaster had happened and we were the 1st so that wasn't being run by b.p. To get closer than anyone had to the site of the blowout at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico to see what was happening down there and what we learned was that basically everything that could get out of the way of the oil got out of the way of the oil all the critters everything that couldn't was buried under a permanent carpet of oil that now blankets the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico it's a cold frozen environment dark and all of the sort of worst parts of the oil or what are still there the things that the little bacteria that eat oil didn't want to eat or excrete it out because it's too dangerous and too toxic for them and that's still there and that killed everything that can get out of the way of it and it is as some life has come back to the region which it has some sea life though that sea life is then. Consuming that toxic oil that's still down there and it's making its way through various food chains including for example things like phytoplankton which is the basis of 50 percent of the oxygen we need on this planet to live and so the reverberation is there's oil that's still being found for example in the eggs of birds that have flown through the Gulf of Mexico and had eaten something along there along the way there are still entire communities of species that haven't fully recovered and of course there's ongoing economic impacts and health impacts on both workers and people who live near the site of the Gulf of Mexico. B.p. On the other hand just most recently awarded its current c.e.o. Bob Dudley. This just a couple weeks that actually last week a award for the petroleum c.e.o. Of the year and one of the reasons they cited was his ability to recover the company from the disaster and the company is economically fully recovered which is not not doesn't sound well I think to many of the families and communities that were economically devastated by the disaster when I bring this up for 3 reasons Antonia 1st of all there is actually another spill happening right this minute in New Orleans and the Washington Post is saying that it has that the 10 children be even worse than the blowout at the Deepwater Horizon site it's an oil spill it's been quietly leaking millions into the Gulf and has gone on plugged so something between $3700.00 barrels of oil a day are spewing about 12 miles off the coast of Louisiana so a this it's and it's happening so quietly that no one's really paying attention I also bring it up because that Deepwater Horizon thing Mark Walberg in the film that was made out it means that people. Paid a bit more attention to it that's right and might have that in their mind as we go forward and talk about the pipeline construction and the dangers they're in and thirdly I'm assuming that that research on what happened at the Deepwater Horizon informed your investigation into what happens when people are building these oil and gas pipelines how many people are actually in danger so. Well let's ask let's start by asking you about the North Dakota access pipeline in d.a.p. You started at the lynchpin year was like 2016 Why did you decide to look at this pipeline and why that year so this is the Dakota access pipeline it's otherwise known as Dapple d a.p.o. And that kind of access pipeline grabbed my attention as it grabbed headlines across the country because it became I would say the most contentious modern us oil and gas project ever in the modern era there are a number reason a number of reasons for that but one is as you cite the disaster with deepwater horizon just an increasing attention paid to oil and gas production in the United States as that oil and gas production has ramped up we've been in a drilling boom that really began around 2005 and we've almost without sweat out stop although there have been a few bumps along the way for the drillers we have we have been drilling so much oil and natural gas in the United States that in 2015 we surpassed the record that we had set before in 1970 and then went beyond it and in 2012 we became the largest oil or natural gas producer in the world of the 2 resources combined and this is been because of this consistent boom in production offshore onshore anywhere they can drill and that led to more and more communities and people being directly impacted by drilling who hadn't been previously and led to increased opposition to that drilling and then increased learning from those communities. Across impacts and across locations those communities coming together more and more and more to stand up with each other in resistance to operations and to target production and pipelines so with the Dakota access pipeline which is the largest pipeline. Ever built out of North Dakota you saw the coming together of another a number of different communities that had been increasingly impacted by oil and gas drilling and particularly us Indigenous communities who had seen their treaty rights their environments. Negatively impacted for too long and had really come together in a very profound way to stop this pipeline and they were joined by allies from across the world and across the nation supporting them so 150 different Native American and international tribes came together in opposition to this one pipeline and that had never happened before so this was a very historic resistance event and I came to cover it doing a couple of different investigations for Pacific Standard and for grants to magazines and. Didn't intend when I came to cover it to cover death or worker safety but then in August 2016 I learned of the death of one worker building the Dakota access pipeline and there was a little sort of blip of a report in the local a.p. Covering his death with very limited information can we assume Antonia that this served this boom is not because all of a sudden this these resources were discovered but because for political reasons it was important to drive down dependence on foreign reserves and to drive down prices. And people like having gas prices low and politicians love to claim that they drove those prices down so all of a sudden these reserves were always in the ground so why did they decide to start building these pipelines and why did they become so important for these bottom lines for the company's bottom. Yeah it isn't associated with the decline in price so that's really important actually as the surge in production was getting under way the price of oil was also increasing dramatically and the price of oil got to its highest Modern point in 2008 and the reason why it came down was really because that one of the price of oil helped precipitate the global financial collapse the price of oil became $150.00 a barrel it was way too much for economies that are dependent on oil to purchase and consumers who are dependent on gasoline to be able to withstand that together with the. Deregulation in how in the housing sector and investment the housing sector helped contribute to the global financial collapse the global financial collapse more than anything else contributed to the collapse of the price of oil not increased production and certainly increased production is not on tangent with a reduction in the price of gasoline for American consumers a lot of what happened was we were increasing that production and we were shipping a great deal of it to Canada so while there was a blockade for a good amount of time although it doesn't exist any longer on exploiting oil out of the United States there was an exception for exporting that oil to Canada through a shipping a lot of it to Canada and there wasn't a prohibition on shipping gasoline which we were also increasingly exporting out of the United States during that period as well so the reason for the increase in production really had to do it began under the Bush administration and it was a combination of the Bush administration relaxing regulations on where companies could drill and under what conditions they could drill a combination of that and new technology making fracking easier. More affordable for companies like fracking extracts natural gas from the air it's also oil so fracking is just a technique by which you blasts to using a giant water and chemical Cannon you go underground you blast using this cannon you blast rock in which oil is found so whereas Traditionally most oil is found in what is not exactly but kind of equivalent to driven underground a reservoir of oil and used to tap a pipe into it and I'm making this much more simple than it actually is and that oil comes out very fairly simply while our natural gas that is trapped within the rock formations under the ground has to be released from those rock formations and fracking is a way of hydraulically hydraulic fracturing of the rock so I had relic means water so you're blasting it with water and chemicals Ok water and chemical cocktail and that technology combined with the deregulation of the Bush administration as well as the desire of the Bush administration to really help well and gas companies make more money is what led to the beginning of the boom and that boom was then carried on from administration to administration to administration it's always so helpful to get oil and gas $1.00 to $1.00 for the u.n. Tony because you know we tend to once again just go to the pump or turn on the the pilot light and just assume that it's going to be there but there are consequences environmental and in terms of worker health and safety if you're just joining us Antonio you has is here and we're talking today about her most recent research into literally the human cost of the oil and gas industry so it may have 2016 construction on the pipeline the Kota access pipeline began it's about 1200 miles long How unusual is this particular construction project so this is this. It is the largest pipeline ever to be built out of North Dakota we have seen a boom in oil and gas pipeline construction that coincided with the oil and gas production boom and a rapid increase in pipeline construction so rapid in fact and again this is similar to where we started with b.p. Deepwater Horizon disaster where again I said that the judge's final ruling in the case was very clear that b.p. Had put saving time and money over safety in you wanted to say Yeah I thought his exact words were b.p. Was. Guilty of gross negligence and willful misconduct and so but there was no real consequence so I mean there was a many many there was that there was the largest judgment against any oil company ever for environmental bees in the case of b.p. It was I don't have these numbers memorized in my head anymore right now but around a 60000000000 dollars judgment but it gives you a sense of how big these companies are that that was a drop in the bucket for b.p. So b.p. Is is perfectly financially healthy today after facing what was the largest environmental judgment by any u.s. Court against against an oil company so no lessons learned in terms of the consequences if companies who are doing the construction on these pipelines they figure they just kind of break that into their financial cake Well I mean I I think that there were many lessons learned and the Obama administration for example started putting in place new regulations on offshore drilling which the Trump administration eliminated the Obama administration started putting in place new regulations for Occupational Safety and Health Administration OSHA which oversees worker safety onshore and some offshore began putting in place energy regulations and environmental regulations 1500 of which the Trump administration has removed 300 just in the energy sector alone so there were a lot of lessons learned and they've been unlearnt with under the new administration not to say the Obama administration. Did anything close to everything that could and should have been done but it learned a lot studied a lot and put in place many good reforms I would say almost all of which have been eviscerated under this administration but what is very similar for the pipeline companies is this speed the necessity for speed in saving time and saving money at the expense of worker environmental and community health and safety so since 2010 Boyle a natural gas pipelines and pipelines carrying all hazardous materials of which oil is a part are significantly more likely to fail than pipelines built at any time in the last century so in other words the newer the pipeline in the United States the more dangerous it is the more likely it is to explode to rupture to have an incident during its construction or once it's done that put someone in the hospital either a community member or a worker and that's because of the lack of appropriate regulations the lack of appropriate oversight and the companies just moving for speed and saving money without being held to appropriate regulatory account and that is what happened with the Dakota access pipeline which where we started this discussion you know this wasn't wasn't stream we unique pipeline for many reasons but also not that unique oil pipelines are getting built across United States but this was the one that got attention which is why I was there in the 1st place which is why I happened to notice when Troy Dolan died while the pipeline was being constructive which is then what led me to investigate and open an entirely unfortunately entirely new area of investigation looking into the fatalities of oil and gas pipeline construction workers because though the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes fatality rate data . For almost all industries that's where we get fatality rate data for industries in the United States they have only occasionally done so for oil and gas production and they have never ever done so for oil and gas pipeline construction so I did that work myself. It's extraordinary You would think it would almost seem to follow that lessons would have been learned and that the the dangers would be lessened not increased going forward if you're just joining us we're talking to Antonia Yuhas And her about her latest Pacific standard cover story it's called Death on the Dakota access this is the pipeline that hit all of the headlines. Where Native American tribes attempted to stop the construction on this 1200 mile pipeline unsuccessfully as recently as last week when construction workers were forced to stop by activists who were trying to kayak up to the work sites and dangle from trees and make platforms to just stop the clear cutting for this thing but it appears to be too to no avail or is there any help for the workers who are actually facing dangerous circumstances 866798255 is the number if you have questions for Antonia So again this describe this pipeline it carries about more than a half 1000000 barrels of oil a day but it originates where and it goes where and it ends up where Sure so this is a series of pipelines that begins in North Dakota and it starts in the upper tip of of North Dakota traveling across most of the state it originates near Stanley North Dakota travels across the state then cuts into South Dakota then Iowa then Illinois and that pipeline is called the Dakota access pipeline it then connects in Illinois with another pipeline called Energy Transfer crude oil pipeline or at Co which then carries that oil to Texas from Texas that pipeline is now there's one leg that's still being built and that's what you were just referencing and that's the buy you bridge pipeline. And so what the buyer bridge pipeline does is where the Dakota access pipeline combined with Echo which is combined called the bokken pipeline carries that oil from North Dakota to Texas the reason for carrying that oil from North Dakota to Texas is to export it that's the reason why we're going it's going wherever the company's wish to send it it's also being refined there into gasoline and other products but increasingly into petro chemical products it has to be what's called both oil but even more so natural gas are cracked into components that are then become the inputs into plastics and making plastics so a lot of this is about increasing the plastics market but back to this pipeline so this pipeline goes to Texas and to export this is loyal primarily to export it out of the United States then the buy you bridge pipeline which you just referenced is just this extra leg that cuts across this beautiful by you system in Louisiana. To the Louisiana coast to essentially allow the Louisiana markets to cash in as well so that same or oil will feed refineries in Louisiana and again to be exploited and again part of this as as I discussed this boom in oil and natural gas production there's a strong attempt to get all of that product to the coasts so that it can be exported out of the country but one of the things that the industry is particularly interested in right now is dramatically increasing that production for petro chemicals for making plastics because they see us looking at reducing the amount of oil and natural gas that is used for energy reducing the amount of oil and are left tricity reducing the amount of oil a natural gas is used for transportation has a. Servatius measures that's right and so they are looking to dramatically expand petro chemical production and part of this movement of this oil out of or to Kota out of North Dakota but also natural gas across the country to get it to the coast via pipeline is to help feed this booming petrochemical industry in addition to just transporting out the oil and gasoline and natural gas as well and you we are talking or oil and gas construction What do these pipelines look like and what is the cost in human life to construct these pipelines that bring us the petro chemicals oil and gas that we've come to rely on we're going to hear the names Nicholas Genesis and Troy Dolan to workers who lost their lives in the construction of these pipelines 866-798-8255 is the number Stay with us we'll be right back. This is the political fight of his life. Florida's governor against former Republican representative and the census polls show them in a dead heat. Across the finish line. You can hear one in one half hour from now at 11 o'clock this morning right after your call your on 91.7. There are many ways you can take part in the conversation on your call calls on the telephone you can send us an e-mail to your call at. Or or by going to the your call dot org website if you'd like to participate in today's show by phone call toll free 866-798-8255 that's 866-798-8255 you can also tweet us your call radio. For those of you just joining us I'm Renee camp and this is your call as Kevin said we are podcasting the show and you can find more information at your call radio dot org Tomorrow philanthropists talk about changing the world for the better but very often they use market based win win sort of solution sort of the capitalists idea of the land and his new book winners take all former insider. Exposes The irony of so-called change agents who end up pushing solutions that leave the systems that allowed them to get rich in the 1st place untouched he says that elites favor ways of thinking that focus on the unnamed and unaccountable systems that often leave out the greater part of our population so join the next year call with Rose Aguilar and if you're just joining us on today's One Planet series where to. Working with investigative reporter Antonia you HA's about her latest cover story it called Death on the Dakota access 866798255 is the number so your latest investigation took you to North Dakota you looked into 2 deaths at the Dakota access pipeline and you uncovered the fact that the oil and gas boom that you refer to has actually turned the can the pipeline construction industry into one of the deadliest in the country so how did you decide to focus on the danger to the workers and focus on that specifically Yeah I'd also written on the pipeline itself and resistance to the pipeline and then when I found out I saw this a.p. Report that there had been a worker who had died building the pipeline and it received very little press attention so I started to dig into what the circumstances were and the 1st thing I found out was that there was very little information about the circumstances of his death. Was this Troy Dolan or this elicited as Nicholas Janice said Ok and so I began to dig deeper into his death. Filing a Freedom of Information Act request. Going out near to where his death occurred getting information from the unions of which he was a member and began to sort of piece together the dangers associated with building pipelines and it made me decide that I had wanted to focus just on this question do an investigation into this question of why how he died and how his death is emblematic of the dangers of this industry and how it has been and reported previously so the 1st is just looking at Nicholas Jannah such So he's 27 years old he was from Grand Rapids Minnesota and he had only been this was the 1st pipeline he'd ever worked on and he'd only been on the job for 3 weeks and he was alone working in a very rural part. North Dakota the closest town was tyo North Dakota population 1500 people this increase of moving workers into more and more rural out of the way parts of the country is a hallmark of fracking because oil is the access is being given to oil and more and more parts of the country through deregulation but also fracking is opening up areas to production that hadn't previously seen production before Jonna situ is working a centrally alone but he was also working on what should be one of the easiest and safest parts of this job it's the end of the pipeline construction the pipe has already been laid the land been restored on top of it and he's driving a tractor basically tilling the land to restore it to it's close to its original. The way it was before the pipeline was built what he was specifically doing was was pulling an inline ripper which is a sort of. A piece of giant piece of farm equipment that has these sky like blades that cut into the earth and he was hired by a sub contracting company called Indian Head pipeline which was itself a subcontractor to persuasion pipeline which was itself a subcontractor to Dakota access l.c. Which is itself and I'm going to go through this chain of companies because this is important as part of the reason why the companies are so shielded from deaths being identified with their pipelines are any liability or accountability because Dakota access else c. Is owned by energy transfer Partners LP which is owned by energy transfer partners equity LP I was all that you know and it was well mark on me let me get there Ok well e.g. P l l c which is the general partner that owns Energy Transfer Equity LP and this is a that there's no accountability somewhere in that chain that's right so basically the only companies that are held to account are the it was called the immediate employers so that means that Nicholas Jonathan was hired Janice had to excuse. Me was hired by Indian Head pipeline which is the immediate employer they were the only company held to account for his death and almost no where would you see the rest of these companies named and because of that I was able because of that it was almost impossible for me to find the 2nd death which had previously not been reported at all is associated with Dakota access pipeline because you can't just for example type into the Occupational Safety and Health Administration OSHA's website Dakota access pipeline and see all the workers who died or were injured building that pipeline that that option doesn't exist to the public. Because I was looking at this point for if there were any other deaths I found the names of the companies that were the primary sub contracting companies for the workers I looked for deaths associated with those companies I then went state by state looking at what where those deaths happened what were the circumstances of the deaths I then looked at press reports that coincided with the location of the pipeline and through that process I den if I trow dog trode oil Tolan's death and he died 3 days after Nicholas John to sit at the opposite end of the Dakota access pipeline suggests died in North Dakota he was injured when he went to fix on his own a piece of equipment that had been altered by the sub contracting company he tried to fix it by himself which he should have called his his foreman to get a company that actually knew how to fix a piece of equipment but time is money in the oil fields we tried to do it himself he put a jack stand into the piece of equipment and it came crashing on to his skull a likely fracturing his skull he died within 24 hours of being injured 3 days later on the opposite end of the pipeline showed true Dolan Troy Dolan was working. And he was suffering from extreme heat exhaustion he should have been sent home instead he found respite under a one ton truck the flatbed of a one ton truck he must have passed out there and he was run over when the truck driver moved and crushed him under the weight of the truck again he should have been there's no question that he should have been sent home based on the interviews of people who were present at the time but you know time is money and he was kept on the job and he also died on the job now these this. This checkerboard of companies means it's also very difficult to know if there were other deaths that happened I don't know under construction of the Dakota access pipeline it's possible that there were but there isn't enough public publicly accessible information to know for certain I also only know about injuries on the job in only one of the states because that's because North Dakota is the only state that publicly publically makes available this work or injury data associated with a particular job site so I know that there were 11 workers who were injured on the job but there I don't know there's no way to know if there were other injuries in the other states to which it passes you think that's on purpose Oh for sure for sure to make it much more difficult to know deaths and injuries and that's also been made more difficult under the Trump administration which has limited and restricted publicly available and reported data on injuries and fatalities of workers so while I was in the course of writing this article the information that I needed was in some ways just disappearing from these public websites because. The data that needed to be made available was being limited that I needed was being limited by the tramp it ministration But what I then found after I got a 5 these 2 deaths. I then found as I had mentioned earlier that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has not been presenting fatality rate data for this industry so with their guidance and with their help in trying to mimic as close as possible the way that they create fatality rate data I used publicly available data Bureau of Labor Statistics data to create my own fatality rate and I found that just like oil and gas production the building of oil and natural gas pipelines is among one of the deadliest jobs in the country in fact you found something like $3.00 times more deadly than the average American workers job that's right in 2016 but but that these this fatality rate reached a high of 7 times the national average twice since since 2003 which is when the Bureau of Labor Statistics only began providing the numbers of workers who have died while in this job sector and that 7 that they tell the rate of 7 times the average American worker is consistent also for oil and gas production which is also it turns out in the deadliest jobs in America so producing the oil and natural gas and building the pipelines to carry it are among the deadliest jobs in the nation were you surprised by that that it's not just the the offshore drilling which we you know picture being out in the middle of the ocean and subject to the elements and and all kinds of other dangers so to what extent were you surprised that the actual pipeline construction itself is so deadly you know I think both for the onshore production and the pipelines I was very surprised at how high these fatality rates were particularly because you know even as someone who spends a lot of my time investigating accidents that go wrong in this industry we all still live within this. You know sort of general understanding created by the oil and gas industries that they because they are so wealthy because they are so advanced that they. They are you know spending every available dollar that they can to make their work sites as safe as possible and of course that's what energy transfer partners said when we sought input from them in response to the article and that's not the case so these are very dangerous work sites is what one finds out and they are extremely lacking in appropriate regulatory oversight in some cases almost no regulatory oversight at all and they are extremely dangerous for their workers and extremely dangerous for the communities through which they pass and to me that was very very surprising even even as someone who spent so much time studying what goes wrong and that these dangers have increased for a number of reasons. One being. That might be too much to go into the time that we have it's increased for a number of reasons including because of the Trump administration and even for additional Pushit deregulation that's happened but problems existed even before the Trump administration came in so you were taking what was already a dangerous job and just making it even more dangerous as a result of this new administration so one of the things that happened for example on the Dakota access pipeline is that prior to Nicholas Jonna such as death the OSHA office the Occupational Safety and Health Administration office in North Dakota had not visited a single work site along the Dakota access pipeline at all at all you know entire 6 months of its construction prior to his death why they weren't responsible for the oversight or it was an oversight on their part or why wouldn't they have is that it not once so what's odd about a boil and natural gas is that even though this is one of the deadliest jobs sectors in the country and even though it's considered part of the mining sector by the federal government it's not regulated in the same ways of the mining sector is it is under lesser regulatory standards and is considered a quote unquote low hazard industry so that it faces lesser regulation than things like coal mining or other types of mining of wishes of which is technically a part instead it's under the OSHA Act which doesn't require mandatory jobsite inspections and OSHA is a tragically underfunded agency so in the entire state of North Dakota there are only 8 OSHA inspectors for every single job site in the entire state so whether that's a grocery store or a factory or an oil pipeline there's only 8 inspectors when the I just find that shocking you were shocked but I mean that just seems impossible and that's so what if c.i.a.o. Estimate is that it would take 100 years for each job site in North Dakota to be visited just once in 100 years by OSHA and that's typical across the country so you have not enough inspectors you also have. Areas of oil and gas that because of oil industry lobbying are are. Exempt from a number of requirements of oversight and regulation and then you have on top of that the Trump administration coming in and rolling back regulations that had been tried to be put in place by the Obama administration and you have a budget for example right now for the entire OSHA budget it's what it was in 2010 and basically since 1980 when OSHA was created it hasn't been significant hasn't seen its budget significantly increased anyway and then now the budget is under attack by the Trump administration as well as a hiring freeze and then retirements that happened with a lot of people wanting to leave when the temp administration came into office with a decline in best a gator's a decline in managers across the board across the country well both the workers that you profiled Janice itchin Dolan were represented they were members of the u.n. They which represents many of the nation's pipeline workers including about $1100.00 of the Dakota access pipeline workers so why is the construction so fatal and. Who's looking out for these workers and making sure that they're being taken care of. If what you describe is happening one who is looking out for the workers you know you bring up a really important point which is one of the reasons why these this these work these jobs are so dangerous is how low of union representation they have so well and gas production is almost entirely non unionized there are almost no unions at all representing oil and gas production workers the pipelines are somewhat more unionized estimates of the amount are hard to come by maybe 30 percent and that's because unions like the laborers and internationally. North America you know what you mention these are unions that represent workers in otherwise traditionally more unionized sectors like construction these are laborers and they are constructing a pipeline so essentially where oil and gas work overlaps with other sectors you see you know some unionization So for example refinery workers are maybe about 50 percent potentially represented by unions because they overlap with the United Steelworkers unions the pipeline workers are somewhat represented because they overlap with construction work on these union job sites and I research this fatalities are about half for oil and gas pipe I construction on union represented job sites the non union represented workers and so Dakota access pipeline I didn't have the capacity to look at all pipelines in the u.s. . May in fact be unique that there were only 2 deaths because it was a union job site there were union companies these these workers are represented by unions and and the job sites for union job sites that said. The unions only have so much influence obviously in this day and age and their influence is b. Is quite under attack so that also means that what they are able to push for each day is limited because they have so many obstacles that they're trying to overcome and less influence obviously than they have had in the past Ok let's go to a question Greg in Palo Alto thanks so much for awhile for waiting Well thank you I hope I don't get you off your subject here but I wanted to ask you couple questions one clearly companies don't have any regard for their employee health and safety that's not true just pipeline but I'm sure you have that knows about the Deepwater Horizon. Things that happen in Richmond where people were killed or to Horner in regard to rehire you have. Explosions and fires I guess what I'm concerned about though is that beyond the individuals involved and it's the loss of life is tragic but what this has for broader implications you know under the economic system that we live in you know capitalism and the sense of urgency with regard to not only this issue but the impact that these companies are going to have a once they complete this if they are able to complete this on the climate and what that's going to mean in terms of and I'm not trying to make the deaths of these people in significant but imagine the deaths that are going to occur as a result of their being able to develop these ridiculous par sands etc So I saw $700000.00 people at Breton anti Breck's a thing in London and I wonder what she thinks it's going to take for people to get a sense of urgency about this issue climate change and really do something about it thanks Greg Yeah I think you're great I think that there is a dramatic sense of urgency around climate change and we need to see the protection of workers who job it still it still remains while we are still using oil and natural gas and why we're still using fossil fuels they're going to be people whose job it is to get it out of the ground and move it around and we need to see the fate of their safety as tied into the work that's being done to transition away from fossil fuels and even these companies in these unions have put a lot of energy into thinking about transitioning their workers away from oil and gas jobs because of safety but also because of the climate and wanting to see jobs in the renewable energy sector so one of the things that I talk about in the article is what can we do to transition these workers because the skills needed to build an oil and natural gas pipeline do not change depending on what is moving through that pipeline. And so in the United States we are facing a crisis for water pipelines Flint Michigan is the perfect example we have dangerous old toxic pipelines that are carrying our most valuable resource which is our water the resource of which we actually are our life is actually dependent upon which is water it's not dependent on oil or gas and if we had a massive public investment which we need in in our water pipelines making the newer safer. Those same workers who are currently building oil and natural gas pipelines could instead to be transitioned into water pipeline construction and rehabilitation and the the call that was put out by those who are resisting the Dakota access pipeline was that they are water protectors they did not call themselves protesters they called themselves water protectors they were there to protect the water. Flowing that the pipeline was going to flow under and protecting water resources across the country and across the world and they called themselves water protectors and that the pipeline workers could themselves also be water protectors in that sense if we helped them transition into a sector that is safer because of course the skills are the same regardless of what's moving through the pipeline but the safety of the pipeline is significantly increased if it's not having an explosive or toxic substance moving through through it but rather water is moving through it and that's one solution that would also help us protect the workers but transition away from oil and natural gas and towards a framework that's about protecting water and in so doing we would of course be helping to adhere to the demands that the international Pyatt International Panel on Climate Change just released last week a dire warning saying that we only have 13 years to trying keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. And that requires keeping fossil fuels in the ground and we and as we embrace that necessity we also have to think of the people who whose jobs it is you know who are still doing that work Ok thanks Greg let's go next to Josh in San Francisco hi Josh. I hurry a good thanks go read it great thanks friend Tanya I appreciate all the coverage you've done that without it standing up myself with my partner during the 1st week of December when the veterans were all there and we became witnesses for a look at a woman also right next to us and you know I my questions like is there is there kind of a detriment to only kind of explaining one by side meaning trumps agenda as well as you know what the actual pipeline workers are doing conjunction with the lack you know legislation in that area is there a detriment to future movement and not covering what happens when people what then our side tend to do you know awful things as well and such as human cost so the woman though was also. With the with. Basically her family and she had her 82 year old elder mother from Pine Ridge weather and they were separated by a private military contractor working with the veterans group with the White Hart Jr and she spent 6 months in jail on elder abuse charges and they placed her mother and the care of the Guardian and it took us almost a year to get her back I actually reached out to you I believe in June on this issue got to be published a piece about Tiger's Monica's Thanks josh talk about the other side but there wasn't any talk about our son Ok we've got about 2 minutes left Antonio did you want to let him know that it's a really important issue and I actually think there was a fair amount of coverage on what was happening within. The campsite and you know I appreciate you reaching out to me I don't remember receiving that but I appreciate you reaching out to me and there's only unfortunately so much that I can cover if you want to support independent investigative journalism and make it possible for me to write more stories I would love that I am deeply restrict. But I can cover based on the resources available to me and the outlets. I mean I'm able to publish in but in choosing my stories I was trying to choose issues that I saw as not receiving the same amount of attention and having you know just just a voice to reach even more people to make them aware and interested in these topics not to say that. The issues that you are raising particularly the issue of. Families being separated aren't critically important so thank you for your call and bringing that to our attention. Quickly with just about a minute left Antonia What do you think people would or could or should do differently if they understood the dangers of this construction just about a minute left I think it's really important as the Trump administration is touting itself as one that is about protecting workers and building jobs that we look highly critically at what that means and who's actually getting the benefits of the administration and that we look at the data around the dangers of oil and gas work and incorporate that into our transitioning from a fossil fuel based economy to long where we keep fossil fuels in the ground outstanding Antonia you has as usual always so informative She's an investigative reporter who reported from Standing Rock for Pacific Standard She's the author of 3 books her latest article for the pacific standard cover story is death on the Dakota access an investigation into the deadly business of building oil and gas pipelines thank you so much for joining us thanks for the calls. Produced Today Show and Phil Hartman is the chief engineer Kevin Vance is the studio engineer thanks for joining us I'm Renee Kemp it's your call. Hell and hold got a threatening letter from election officials after registering people to vote in Georgia I got scared you know and then test so she got help. If you want to kick around you came to the right place shut out of the polls on the next reveal one hour from now 12 new poll revealed from the Center for investigate . Reporting here on 91.7 he held a view San Francisco. Supported Agriculture are growing in popularity to noon on the next edition of alternative really. Pushing back the corporate food. That alternative radio Monday afternoon. Right here on a 91.7. The u. San Francisco the time now is 11 o'clock. Most Americans will vote for governor next month as usual Florida has one of the nation's most fascinating races so let's meet one of the candidates from w e n u and n.p.r. In Washington this is one egg. Hey there I'm Joshua Johnson today on one a and drew gill of he's currently Mayor of Florida's capital Tallahassee running as a Democrat his Republican opponent Ronda Santas hopes to keep the governor's mansion with the g.o.p. By aligning closely with President Trump Gillum could be a rising Democratic star but his party has not won this race since the mid ninety's will meet him ahead and get his vision for Florida's future then we'll take a broader look at this year's gubernatorial races which major issues and candidates could shape the nation we'd love to hear from you comments on our Facebook page or tweet us at one end. B.b.c. News with the Montgomery President Putin's spokesman Dimitri pissed off and said the threat by the United States to pull died of a 30 year old treaty on intermediate range nuclear missiles is deeply concerning misstep the scarf said that if this went ahead Russia would have to act to restore the nuclear balance after talks with visiting u.s. National security adviser John Bolton his Russian counterpart Nicholai Patricia said that Moscow was prepared to work with Washington on addressing any mutual grievances Sarah Rainsford is in Moscow John Bolton's visit to Moscow was expected to focus on Syria now the u.s. National security advisor is having to explain a u. Turn in America's nuclear weapons policy one that risks a return to the arms race that's what officials in Moscow have been warning. Today the Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov denied that Russia had violated the treaty as President Trump claims Mr Peskov said Russia was concerned by the u.s. Announcement and warns that abandoning the historic deal would make the world a more dangerous place he went on that the u.s. Would develop the banned weapons once again forcing Russia as he put it to follow suit Turkey says it will do everything it can to shed light on the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi a spokesman for President said nothing would remain in the dark regarding the investigation into the killing in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul our diplomatic correspondent James Rubens reports almost 3 weeks after Jamal Khashoggi disappeared into the Saudi Consulate more evidence is still emerging which appears to support Turkey's insistence he was the victim of premeditated murder by a large Saudi hit squad new c.c.t.v. Footage shows a man apparently disguised and dressed as Mr Khashoggi walking in Istanbul as if the journalist had left the consulate safely Saudi Arabia's foreign minister has admit. That the journalist was indeed murdered there and that the cover up was attempted Turkey's president at one is promising to reveal much of the case put together by his police and security services in a speech to morrow North and South Korea have agreed to remove weapons and guard posts from a truth village that straddles their heavily fortified border ask the 2 sides look to maintain the momentum of improving ties he is our Asia Pacific editor Michael Bristow plan moon drum also known as the joint security area is the only place along the border where we're posing soldiers stand face to face the leaders of the 2 Koreas met there twice this year the village has Down the years also seen a number of skirmishes Sembilan North Korean soldier was shot in seriously injured by his own side or defecting to the south by Thursday.