With the green light from the US government, the company building the Dakota Access oil pipeline on Wednesday said it plans to resume work immediately to finish the project.
Opponents of the US$3.8 billion project protested across the US in an action some dubbed their “last stand.”
The US Army on Wednesday granted the developer of the four-state oil pipeline formal permission to lay pipe under a Missouri River reservoir in North Dakota, clearing the way for completion of the project.
Photo: Reuters
“We plan to begin immediately,” Vicki Granado, a spokeswoman for developer Energy Transfer Partners, said in an e-mail to reporters on Wednesday night.
Work had been stalled for months due to opposition by the Standing Rock Sioux, but US President Donald Trump last month instructed the Army Corps of Engineers to advance pipeline construction.
The tribe say that a pipeline leak could contaminate its drinking water.
Energy Transfer Partners says the pipeline is safe.
“Now, we all need to work together to make sure the project is completed safely and with as little disruption to the community as possible. This has been a very difficult issue for everyone who lives and works in the area,” US Senator John Hoeven said in a statement announcing that the final easement had been granted.
Some members of the Standing Rock Sioux, which has been at the center of the debate for nearly a year, took to via social media to call for “emergency actions.”
Protesters posted an online list of about 50 events nationwide. There were large rallies, including one outside the White House, and smaller ones, such as in Des Moines, Iowa.
A group of protesters in Chicago targeted a bank, while another group went to an Army Corps of Engineers office in New York City, but were asked to leave when they started filming without a permit.
Several people were arrested for blocking public access to a federal building in San Francisco.
“Today begins the next phase of mass resistance to Donald Trump’s toxic Dakota Access pipeline,” said Dallas Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network. “This is our land, our water, our health, and our culture at stake — and if Donald Trump thinks we will give all of that up without a fight he is wrong.”
Later, Joye Braun and Payu Harris, two pipeline opponents who have been at the camp since April last year, said in an interview at a nearby casino on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation that there is frustration, but also resolve in the wake of the army’s decision.
“The goal is still prayerful, nonviolent direct action,” Braun said.
The pipeline is to carry North Dakota oil through the Dakotas and Iowa to a shipping point in Illinois.
The construction is almost complete.
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