ND blames feds for cost of pipeline resistance
BISMARCK, N. D. – The state filed a lawsuit here against the U.S. government on July 18, trying to recoup the $38 million incurred as a result of former Gov. Jack Dalrymple’s emergency declaration to suppress the Oceti Sakowin resistance to Dakota Access Pipeline construction.
The lawsuit blames the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for having “abdicated its responsibility to prevent and then close” what the filing describes as “unlawful encampments on USACE lands” where the corps allegedly provided “safe havens” in which “trespassers were using federal lands as a staging area to conduct illegal activities.”
Energy Transfer Partners and associates developed the nearly 1,200-mile-long pipeline to ship fracked crude oil from the Bakken Formation, centered on the Ft. Berthold Indian Reservation, across unceded treaty land, to refineries and markets on the Gulf Coast.
The 41-page complaint specifically names the Oceti Sakowin, Sacred Stone, and Rosebud resistance camps as illegal, stating that the corps provisionally issued camping permits, but never completed them, because applicants failed to provide required assurance bonds.
The camps, on the banks of the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers adjacent to the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation, attracted from 5,500 to 8,000 people at a time from April 2016 to March 2017, numbers that would constitute the 10th largest city in North Dakota, according to the lawsuit.
Campers came from 48 U.S. states and countries all around the world to stand against construction and with grassroots indigenous and tribal government advocates of protecting treaty rights, sacred sites, clean water and climate justice.
The case charges that they were “trespassers at these unlawful encampments” many of whom “engaged in disruptive, illegal and sometimes violent conduct on federal, state and private lands, including blocking public highways, threatening individuals working on the DAPL pipeline and the local population (such as ranchers), and directly initiating violence against law enforcement personnel and first responders.” The state made 761 arrests during the joint law enforcement operation.
NATIVE SUN NEWS TODAY
Support Native media!
Read the rest of the story on Native Sun News Today: ND blames feds for cost of pipeline resistance
Join the Conversation
