Floods Put Pipelines At Risk -- WSJ

So, maybe this is another reason for the current love affair with crude-by-rail.

This was the only story on page 3, section A of today's issue of the WSJ -- we've talked about page 3 before -- the most important page in the paper.

Federal investigators plan to announce soon that flood-caused erosion along the riverbed—known as scouring—exposed an Exxon Mobil Corp. pipeline on the Yellowstone River in Montana in 2011, causing it to break and spill 1,000 barrels of crude, said a senior federal pipeline official speaking on condition of anonymity. 

A month later, an Enterprise Products Partners LLP pipeline burst after it was exposed by scouring in a Missouri River floodplain in Iowa, spilling 818 barrels of a gasoline additive. The greater weight and speed of floodwater can scrape dozens of feet of soil and gravel off a river's bed, potentially exposing pipelines and leading to their rupture. Heavy snow and rain last year caused record flooding on the Missouri River basin, which includes the Yellowstone.