The social impacts of TransCanada's Keystone XL Pipeline concern mostly the surrounding local communities (both indigenous and non-indigenous). These implications range from health issues, destruction of local environment, contamination of water, implications on farm production and possible destruction on local indigenous artefacts.

Regarding the Keystone XL Pipeline there are major concerns for the environment, from the original stages of production, to the processing and transportation of the oil. TransCanada Corp put “substandard materials” — made by Quebec manufacturing company, Ezeflow — in an Alberta natural gas pipeline that blew up in 2013, Canada’s pipeline regulator said on February 5 2016 as it finally responded to a four-year old warning from a whistleblower with a new industry-wide safety order (source the National Observer).

A July 2017 Greenpeace report concluded: oil spills anywhere pose serious risks to human health and the environment, and oil spilled into bodies of water is difficult to fully clean up. Diluted bitumen transported from Canada’s tar sands fields represents a particular threat to water resources along the routes of proposed pipelines.

The Keystone XL Pipeline will have major consequences for the human rights of Indigenous people. The Rosebud Sioux, also known as the Sicangu Lakota, reside on a reservation that includes all of Todd County, South Dakota, and additional lands in the four adjacent. Poverty, high unemployment, substandard education and healthcare are all major issues these communities face. Choosing to live on reservations, therefore, can be a powerful statement of sovereignty. To some, it is an act of self-determination intended to stand against centuries of forced-assimilation policies which stripped land, resources and even children from tribal communities.

Keystone XL has brought this hard-won spirit of sovereignty under threat. The plan to expand an existing oil pipeline system, linking oil-rich tar sands in the Canadian province of Alberta with refineries and distributors across the US, would essentially bisect South Dakota, cutting straight through Rosebud Sioux tribal land. Read the full article here.