A group of more than 50 community members gathered in Flagstaff’s Heritage Square Tuesday to stand in unity and show their support for the Standing Rock Sioux protesters fighting to stop the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota.
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U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said Tuesday that work will temporarily stop between State Highway 1806 and 32 kilometres east of Lake Oahe, but that work will continue west of the highway because he believes the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lacks jurisdiction on private land.
The incident occurred within half a mile of an encampment where hundreds of people have gathered to join the tribe’s protest of the oil pipeline, which is slated to cross the Dakotas and Iowa to IL.
The North Dakota tribes fear the roughly 1,200-mile pipeline from the Bakken oil fields to southern IL will harm waterways and threaten historical artifacts. Phillips 66 PSX, +0.30%, the refiner, owns 25%.
That motion is based on the tribes’ claim that it was not properly consulted before the U-S Army Corps of Engineers approved the pipeline project which would run from North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and IL.
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Boasberg said he’ll issue a decision by the end of Friday on the tribe’s broader push that challenges federal regulators’ decision to grant permits.
“These protests are not about the safety and efficiency of pipelines – but about keeping it in the ground”.
No arrests were made, but authorities are actively investigating Tuesday’s protest and a clash Saturday between private security personnel and a few hundred protesters who marched onto a separate construction site “and we will pursue charges as needed”, Kirchmeier said.
The judge denied that emergency restraining order. Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party spray painted the blade of a bulldozer used by a construction crew.
A spokesman for Earthjustice, a non-profit environmental law organization, said Judge Boasberg’s temporary injunction does not include a work stoppage on the land that was the scene of the protests.
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”.
An attorney for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe says it is grateful that work will be temporarily stopped on a section of the four-state oil pipeline.
Despite video footage of bulldozers plowing up burial sites, Energy Transfer Partners attorneys denied that workers have destroyed any cultural sites, and insisted that the company “has taken and continues to take every reasonable precaution”.
Proceedings in D.C. District Court today really showcased the complexity of this case… and tensions were high here today.
“That’s where the sites were found on Friday”, says Jan Hassleman, attorney representing Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The Corps agreed with the pause in construction for “preserving peace”. In response, the Corps said it doesn’t oppose a temporary delay in building the pipeline, but added the tribes were unlikely to prevail.
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The judge reaffirmed on Tuesday that he would issue a decision about the injunction by Friday.
