A company called Energy Transfer is building a 1,170-mile pipeline from western North Dakota to through four states to IL to deliver 500,000 gallons of crude oil per day to refineries.
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Kingi Snelgar has just graduated from Harvard University and was working as a judge’s clerk in the USA state of South Dakota when he heard that members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe needed legal assistance in their fight against an oil pipeline. Hundreds of Native American protestors and their supporters, who fear the Dakota Access Pipeline will polluted their water, forced construction workers and security forces to retreat and work to stop.
But Hall said Saturday’s bulldozing of areas that the tribe had identified in court a day earlier as containing sacred burial grounds and prayer sites, and the use of biting dogs and pepper spray on protesters, “put it into the feeling that we need to protect more”.
Meanwhile in federal court in Bismarck, a temporary restraining order against Archambault II and other Dakota Access Pipeline protesters has been extended and a hearing postponed.
U.S. Judge James Boasberg said on Tuesday he had granted in part and denied in part the temporary restraining order, and that he would decide by Friday whether to grant the tribes’ larger challenge to the pipeline, which would require the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to withdraw permits for the project.
A weekend confrontation between protesters and construction workers near Lake Oahe prompted the tribe to ask Sunday for a temporary stop of construction.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which approved the project in July, said it does not oppose the temporary halt in construction work, reportedly telling the court that “the public interest would be served by preserving peace”.
The judge reaffirmed on Tuesday that he would issue a decision about the injunction by Friday.
Legal counsel for Dakota Access, LLC said tribes declined their requests for consultation and made false statements resulting in threats and attacks on workers, according to the company’s response Tuesday.
Witnesses said pipeline construction workers left the area when protesters arrived.
The protest Saturday came one day after the tribe filed court papers saying it found several sites of “significant cultural and historic value” along the pipeline’s path.
Tribe spokesman Steve Sitting Bear disagreed, telling reporters that security dogs bit six protesters and a young child. It shows that the six top United States banks have extended a $3.75 billion credit line to Energy Transfer Partners, the parent company of Dakota Access.
“Part of it’s good but it’s not all good because I know our sacred sites are going to be destroyed”, he said. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who advocates for clean energy, spent Monday evening with them and used red spray paint to write “I approve this message” on the blade of a bulldozer, a spokeswoman said.
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The Dakota Access pipeline would carry oil across four states from North Dakota to IL through South Dakota and Iowa, cost $3.8 billion to construct, and enable higher production from the Bakken Formation.
