So, the Tribe will do all it can to see that participants comply with the law and maintain the peace. (AP) – Opponents of a $3.8 billion Midwest oil pipeline are vowing to keep up the pressure after this week’s arrests at a construction zone in North Dakota. “We look forward to the pipeline being complete by the end of the year”.
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“It’s grown exponentially”, he said. Tribal councilman Dana Yellow Fat was also arrested Friday as were four others who attempted to block pipeline workers trying to reach the work site early this morning. “Clean water is a right, it’s not a privilege”. The tribe is alleging that the pipeline will disturb sacred Native American sites and adversely affect drinking water for residents of the reservation and millions of others downstream.
The tribe recently sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the project.
Those demonstrating range in age from young children to tribal elders. Pipeline construction started in late May but it was only this week that it moved onto location near the reservation where it will be bored very near the confluence of the Missouri and Cannonball rivers.
“If the oil comes through, there ain’t going to be no water”, she said.
Highway Patrol Lt. Tom Iverson says about 250 protesters were at the site on Monday. To poison the water, is to poison the substance of life. In one location, the pipeline runs just 500 feet from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation border, according to organizer and property owner LaDonna Brave Bull Allard.
“I was doing what everyone else was doing”, Archambault said of his arrest on charges of disorderly conduct.
Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said at a news conference Wednesday on the Dakota Access pipeline, “No work is going to be done there for an undetermined amount of time”. He says there are about 30 troopers monitoring the protest. It’s unclear when it will be determined safe for work to continue.
Yellow Fat said Tuesday he hadn’t been served with the restraining order, but he said it wasn’t necessary.
“What little we have left is under attack”, Archambault said.
Dakota Access states in court records it costs more than $75,000 for each day of lost construction, and the damages are expected to increase significantly for each day construction is halted.
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The Army Corps of Engineers in July gave the pipeline its final federal permits, despite the tribe’s pending lawsuit against the Corps, filed in D.C. district court, which has an injunction hearing scheduled for August 24.
