Woodley has been protesting the pipeline for weeks, documenting the peaceful nature of the Standing Rock demonstration in North Dakota on her Twitter page before returning to DC for the rally, which took place Wednesday outside a federal court building where challenges to the permits were being heard.
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U.S. District Judge James Boasberg listened to arguments Wednesday in Washington, D.C. He says he will rule on the case by September 9.
In a letter to Obama on Thursday, 31 green groups said the White House should deny and revoke the permits necessary to build the Dakota Access pipeline, a 1,168-mile project that would carry 450,000 barrels of Bakken crude oil from North Dakota to IL. The Standing Rock tribe fears a leak could contaminate their drinking water, which comes from the Missouri River.
Native American activists have said they are still hopeful they can halt the construction of a controversial oil pipeline that will run from North Dakota to IL, after a federal judge said he needed more time to decide whether indigenous rights were violated when the project was approved.
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Around 300 union workers who attended the IUB meeting said they saw the decision as a win and planned to be back to work on pipeline Monday morning. 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 pipeline would be a major carrier of crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale formation to the Midwest and down to the Gulf of Mexico, leading some to see it as Keystone XL 2.0, named after the Canada-to-Texas tar sands pipeline that was eventually blocked by the Obama administration.
Jack Dalrymple declared a state of emergency to requisition public money for law enforcement to protect the pipeline companies from the activists after a federal court approved Dakota Access LLC’s request for a temporary restraining order against Standing Rock Tribal Chair David Archambault II and activists.
Mostly members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, but they’ve been joined by other American Indians and non-Native Americans from across the country. “I join with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the many tribal nations fighting this unsafe pipeline”.
Also Wednesday, Dakota Access was told by the Iowa Utilities Board to stay away from the properties of 15 Iowa landowners until Monday to give board time to review legal issues involving a lawsuit.
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When asked what will happen if the judge denies the injunction and Dakota Access tries to resume construction, Camp said, “Then we’ll start blockading”.
