Key ruling on Dakota Access Pipeline due by end of Friday

On Friday, minutes after a judge rejected efforts by the Standing Rock Sioux to halt construction, the federal government intervened, temporarily blocking construction on part of the pipeline. But Dakota Access and its parent company, Energy Transfer Partners LP of Dallas, declined to comment for this story.

“There’s never been a coming together of tribes like this”, she said of Friday’s gathering of Native Americans, which she estimated could be the largest in a century. “The Obama administration has asked tribes to the table to make sure that we have meaningful consultation on infrastructure projects”.

“They already have destroyed sacred sites”, protester Robert Dimas said.

The 1,172-mile pipeline would stretch from the oil-rich Bakken Formation – a vast underground deposit where Montana and North Dakota meet Canada – southeast into South Dakota, Iowa and IL.

Archambault told CNN affiliate KFYR the tribe will appeal the judge’s ruling.

The company plans to complete the pipeline this year, and said in court papers that stopping the project would cost $1.4 billion the first year, mostly due to lost revenue in hauling crude.

The tribe filed an emergency motion Sunday asking the court “to prevent further destruction of the tribe’s sacred sites”.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg says he’ll rule by the end of Friday on the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s request to block the $3.8 billion project, which will carry oil from North Dakota to IL.

Several rallies, including one on the day of the court decision, have been undertaken.

The judge wrote that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers “gave the Tribe a reasonable and good-faith opportunity to identify sites of importance to it”.

September is National Lice Awareness Month, but most people aren’t aware of those cringe-worthy critters until they’re dealing with a full-on infestation.That was the issue Stacey Cole faced when her children became infested with lice.”I just didn’t know what I was supposed to do, what I needed to do in the house, what I needed to do to their heads”, Cole said.That helpless feeling comes at a time when a new study reports most states are overrun by what’s often called “super lice”. “However, important issues raised by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other tribal nations and their members regarding the Dakota Access pipeline specifically, and pipeline-related decision-making generally, remain”, read a joint statement issued by the Army, as well as the Justice and Interior departments.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which owns some of the land where the pipeline was slated to be built and has been involved in the permitting process, said it would halt construction on its property until after officials had re-examined Native American concerns about the pipeline as well as previous projects. The Corps requested that the pipeline company voluntarily pause all construction within 20 miles east or west of Lake Oahe.

Thousands of people from more than 200 Native American tribes have supported the Standing Rock Sioux’s efforts to protect their lands, waters and sacred sites during construction of the pipeline, according to the tribe.

About 30 environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, have slammed the project, calling it “yet another example of an oil pipeline project being permitted without public engagement or sufficient environmental review”‘.

The government’s action reflected the success of growing protests over the planned pipeline that have drawn global support and sparked a renewal of Native American activism. “The security officers were hit and jabbed with fence posts and flagpoles”, the sheriff’s department said.

State authorities announced this week that law enforcement officers from across the state were being mobilized at the protest site, some National Guard members would work security at traffic checkpoints and another 100 would be on standby. He called the federal announcement “a lovely start” and told reporters that the dispute is a long way from over. The Great Plains Tribal Chairman’s Association has asked the federal Justice Department to send monitors to the site because it said racial profiling is occurring.

A weekend confrontation between protesters and private security guards left some guards injured and some protesters with dog bites.