In an op-ed piece recently published in thedickinsonpress.com, John Risch,  native North Dakotan and freight rail operator for more than thirty years, makes the case that the Dakota Access Pipeline is not needed to transport crude oil, as freight rail infrastructure is already in place.
Risch stated that transporting crude oil via rail is safer than underground pipelines, and would put furloughed rail workers back to work.  “We are currently only shipping 3-4 oil trains a day out of North Dakota and we have the capacity to ship 100 trains a day with our state’s 21 oil train loading facilities,” Risch stated. Read the complete article here.