South Dakota hotel owners are feeling the crunch resulting from President Joe Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline project.
“It felt like it was the death of a family,” The Stroppel Hotel and Mineral Baths owner Laurie Cox told The Epoch Times. “These workers really became part of the community that we have, not just here in Midland but in Philip, Murdo, Kadoka. We’re far and few between here.”
Her husband, Wallace Cox Jr., was also scheduled to work on the project. He was an industrial mechanic who had been setting pumps in Minnesota before he was laid off on Feb. 10.
Cox recalled how business was booming last year, with at least 100 workers at every pump station at any given time, looking for accommodation.
This is a drastic contrast to her now a near-empty hotel. Cox said that she worries about the future, but must recognize the void left by the pipeline’s cancellation.
Biden canceled the pipeline’s construction permit on Jan. 20. He told CNBC in May he was "against Keystone from the beginning.”
"It is tar sands that we don't need [and] that in fact is a very, very high pollutant,” he said.
A report from DW.com said the pipeline would have delivered up to 830,000 barrels of crude daily from Alberta, Canada, to Nebraska.
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