Oil pipeline protesters disrupt second construction site

More than a dozen activists, anxious about the environment and opposed to eminent domain, were arrested here Wednesday in a demonstration against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Kirchmeier said there have been discussions with protest camp leaders about lifting the checkpoint if they can guarantee people will stay off the road.

They say it could disturb sacred sites and impact drinking water for 8,000 tribal members in the North Dakota area, as well as millions further downstream the MS and Missouri rivers.

“All these other individuals who don’t live here are going to go home and go to different locations, but we’re still here trying to be neighbors and making sure that our relationships are not damaged in this”, said Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier. Mike Ralston, president of the Iowa Association of Business and Industry, and Bill Gerhard, president of the Iowa State Building & Construction Trades Council, have both strongly endorsed the pipeline.

Several landowners have sued to stop pipeline construction but the courts refused to temporarily halt work until the case can be heard in court.

Adam Mason of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement was a protest organizer.

“We actually shut down traffic for a little while, and we certainly made our point”, Fallon said. “The way that we do that is by escalating our tactics, and that includes using peaceful, non-violent civil disobedience”.

More than 100 protesters appeared at the site, which is near the ongoing Farm Progress Show at the Central Iowa Expo Center in Boone. She set a hearing for Friday to consider the issue further.

The pipeline will transport up to 570,000 barrels of crude oil daily from North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields to a distribution hub at Patoka, Ill. “If the pipeline breaks and leaks (it’s really just a matter of time), it will occur in the Mississippi River watershed, which is the water lifeline for a huge portion of our country”, the pledge states.

“I think that the construction workers and others who have been working on the pipeline have been very patient and they want to go back to work, and they should be permitted to do that”.

The protests in Iowa have started earlier than in North Dakota. Only 22 percent of the pipeline in the state were welded and lowered into trenches, while three-fourths of the route is cleared, utility regulators were told last week. In South Dakota, 93 percent of the pipeline has already been constructed.

The push for completion of the Bakken pipeline comes as many major fossil fuel projects across the United States have been shelved or significantly delayed because of new regulations, grassroots opposition and a decline in energy prices. The report cited a long process covering more than two years since ETP submitted its first proposals for Dakota Access. A decision on the eminent issue could ultimately be decided by the Iowa Supreme Court.