Environment | National

Native Sun News: Standing Rock Sioux Tribe battles pipeline plan

Monday, March 14, 2016

Joye Braun, far left, uses a megaphone during rally at Ft. Yates tribal meeting to prevent oil pipeline construction. Photo courtesy LaDonna Allard

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe ‘Pipeline will affect future generations’
Tribe diametrically expresses opposition
By Talli Nauman
Native Sun News
Health & Environment Editor
www.nsweekly.com

FORT YATES –– As the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, headquartered here, mobilizes to prevent construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Iowa Utilities Board is holding a webcast public hearing March 9-10 of its latest deliberations about the hazardous liquid project application submitted by Houston-based Energy Transfer Partners and Phillips 66.

The proposed 1,134-mile infrastructure plan, also known as the Bakken Pipeline, would carry Bakken crude oil from the fracking fields of Ft. Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota across Lakota ancestral territory in South Dakota, through Sac and Fox land in Iowa to Illinois, according to oil industry proponents.

They already have permission the mammoth undertaking from the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission and the North Dakota Public Service Commission.

Officials expect to reach a decision during the deliberations in Des Moines, Iowa, on granting the oil companies permission to condemn private land for the pipeline when property owners refuse to lease it.

Opponents include a crowd of citizens from South Dakota Indian reservations who packed a hearing room on Feb. 26 during a meeting of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the Army Corps of Engineers at the tribe’s Administrative Services Building in Ft. Yates.