Native American Pipeline Protest Halts Construction in N. Dakota
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18082016/native-americans-sioux-tribe-protest-north-dakota-access-bakken-oil-pipeline-fossil-fuelsAUG 19, 2016
A groundswell of Native American activists has temporarily shut down construction on a major new oil pipeline with an ongoing protest that has drawn around 1,200 people to Cannon Ball, N.D.
Construction workers walked away from their bulldozers Monday after protesters surrounded the equipment and called for an end to construction of the Dakota Access pipeline. A group of protesters on horseback also staged a mock charge toward a line of law enforcement officials guarding the site, and the county sheriff alleged others have fired guns and set off pipe bombs.
The $3.8 billion pipeline at the heart of the protest would carry about half a million barrels of crude oil per day from the Bakken oil field to Illinois where it would link with other pipelines to transport the oil to Gulf Coast refineries and terminals.
The protest was staged at a spot where the pipeline would pass beneath the Missouri River, just upstream from the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, a community of 8,500 along the Missouri River in North and South Dakota.
Protesters from dozens of tribes across the country are now camping in tents, tepees and mobile homes at the Sacred Stone Camp a mile and a half from the construction site. A video shows a second, more recently established campsite, the Red Warrior Camp.
...hile the protest in Cannon Ball is primarily Native Americans, ranchers are challenging the project elsewhere along its 1,168-mile path. On August 9, lawyers representing 14 Iowa landowners filed a motion to halt construction of the pipeline across their property. The suit challenged Dakota Access's use of eminent domain to seize land for what it says is private use.
Over the past year, protests against fossil fuel infrastucture projects nationwide have increaseed, and at least 24 dozen projects have been rejected or canceled for myriad reasons, the most prominent among them the Keystone XL pipeline....
