A federal judge in Washington D.C. has ordered construction to stop temporarily on a portion of the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Missouri River south of Mandan.
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The tribe says less than 24 hours later, Dakota Access workers started construction in the area identified in court records.
A weekend confrontation between protesters and construction workers near Lake Oahe prompted the tribe to ask Sunday for a temporary stop of construction.
The request is in addition to the tribe’s other challenge to the Army Corp of Engineers’ decision to fast-track grant permits to the operator of the four-state pipeline.
The Standing Rock Sioux have sued the U.S. federal government, and are seeking an injunction against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which authorized the pipeline’s construction despite the Tribe stating that the environmental assessment did not take the health, well-being or spiritually significant sites (such as burial grounds) into consideration while choosing the pipeline’s crossing route.
The tribe has filed a lawsuit to halt construction of the pipeline, due to be finished this year.
The Standing Rock Sioux argue that the pipeline threatens sacred sites and poses a risk to the tribe’s drinking- water supply. No pipeline workers were at the site, and no arrests have been made.
Dakota Access is a almost 1,700 mile pipeline created to carry light sweet crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken and Three Forks fields across four states to refineries in southern IL.
Hundreds of protesters have camped out near the reservation for weeks.
Pipeline supporters maintain that the project was properly vetted and permitted, that tribes had the opportunity to comment, and that Dakota Access will move the US and its oil-consuming population closer to energy independence. Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said law enforcement officers pulled back from responding to a report of 150-200 protesters gathered at a construction site on private land because they determined it wasn’t safe to response.
Many of Wisconsin’s 11 tribes are standing in solidarity with the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes. In response, the Corps said it doesn’t oppose a temporary delay in building the pipeline, but added the tribes were unlikely to prevail.
A Dakota Access attorney says if there weren’t disturbances on the section of the oil pipeline that was part of a federal judge’s decision, it would be completed by the end of the week.
“I’m not here for a photo op”, Stein said. Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party spray painted the blade of a bulldozer used by a construction crew. The private security forces also maced 30 people, activists said. Boasberg said he expected to issue a full opinion on that lawsuit on September 9.
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“They’re there to voice their concern and to do whatever they can to stop the pipeline in a nonviolent way”, Schlender said.
