Environmental and tribal groups protesting an oil pipeline from North Dakota said in a letter to the White House it poses a threat to their existence.
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As Indigenous activists maintained resistance to a proposed oil pipeline in North Dakota this week, allied groups on Thursday sent an open letter to President Barack Obama asking him to urge the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to pull its permits for the project. “But not in the middle of the night”. Dalrymple earlier declared a state of emergency to “manage public safety risks associated with the protest”. “You just have to go around and take a separate route to get there”.
The Indians have been staging a protest for months at the confluence of the Missouri and Cannonball rivers in southern North Dakota.
“Apparently they’re not concerned about people going down the other way”, she said. In November 2014, Strategic Economics Group, a Des Moines, IA-based research firm, published a study concluding that the pipeline would provide several billion dollars worth of economic benefits to the four-state region.
The traffic control point will remain until the sheriff is assured there will be no people on the roadway or vehicles parked along the side of the road, said Donnell Preskey, spokeswoman for the Morton County Sheriff’s Office.
Authorities are prepared if Dakota Access resumes construction and things escalate again, with a main goal of keeping protesters, workers and officers safe, Kirchmeier said earlier this week.
Authorities in North Dakota have now arrested 29 protesters in the last two weeks, including the tribal chairman.
In turn, the tribe has sought a preliminary injunction in Washington to halt pipeline construction, accusing the US Army Corps of Engineers of violating historic preservation and environmental laws by approving the pipeline, which would cross just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota.
Dakota Access did not respond to media inquiries Wednesday or Thursday.
William Hanigan, an attorney representing the landowners, noted the list of petitioners originally included 15 landowners, but by Thursday’s hearing, that number was reduced to 14 because pipeline construction finished on one of the landowners’ property. Organizers are emphasizing training in nonviolent direct action to keep the protest peaceful, he said. “I join with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the many tribal nations fighting this unsafe pipeline”.
Members of other tribes and activists from around the country have flocked to a “spirit camp” established near the construction site.
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A hearing was scheduled Thursday to determine whether a preliminary injunction should be issued against the protesters, but Hovland delayed it until September 8, extending the restraining order he had granted August 16.
