Corps won’t oppose tribe’s request to stop work on pipeline

As noted in the Sierra Club’s letter to the President, the recent spate of pipeline spills in California’s Central Valley and Ventura, as well as 2010s still active disaster in Kalamazoo Michigan, should inform even an oil-friendly person that pipelines in and around drinking water sources, much less under a river, are catastrophes waiting to happen and a awful idea. It will travel through 50 counties in four states. The group opposes the project primarily for environmental reasons and because eminent domain is being used to condemn privately owned farmland.

The Onondaga Nation issued a statement off support last month, joining more than 120 indigenous nations who have joined in protest against the pipeline.

In the video, security forces can be seen pushing the dogs to charge at protesters, while others raise cans of pepper spray at the crowds.

“We are going to do what is necessary to protect people and to make sure that the workers and the people who are doing their jobs are able to do so”, the governor said.

What’s more, the Dakota Access Pipeline is objectionable for the same bigger reasons that the similar Keystone XL project was protested by so many and ultimately iced by the Obama administration: It will increase North America’s addiction to fossil fuels at a time when – as the New York Times noted in an remarkable report this weekend – climate change is already here and rising sea levels are wreaking havoc.

In response to the violence, Jennifer Cook, policy director for ACLU of North Dakota issued a statement. If built, the line would carry a half-million barrels of crude oil across the Tribe’s treaty lands each day. “This is a corporation that is bulldozing through”, Archambault told Democracy Now! We were constructing according to our plans.

The Native Americans have a very valid claim, exclusive of the “existential threat to the tribe’s culture and way of life”, in protesting the pipeline’s construction. He also said that there were two more attacks on crews Tuesday. They have to bend the pipe to match the contour of the land before welding and burying the sections.

They were immediately able to clear protesters out.

About 300 people were at the campsite where protesters from across the country and members of 60 tribes have gathered in opposition to the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline that will pass through Iowa, Illinois, North Dakota and South Dakota. No arrests have been made.

A spokeswoman for Stein said Tuesday that activists invited her to leave a message at the protest site.

The Standing Rock Sioux have gone to court to challenge the Army Corps of Engineers’ decision to grant permits for the project, and a federal judge will rule before September 9 on whether construction can be halted.

Demonstrators supporting the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe faced off with private security officers from Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners.

“As a child, my grandmother used to take me to this river and I used to be able to swim in this river and I used to go fishing in this river”, he said.