11/3/23

USACE nearing Dakota Excess pipeline decision

Energy Transfer Partners is an Earth hater based in Texas and infamous for brutalizing water protectors near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. 

Mercenaries and National Guard troops used chemical weapons on many of the thousands of peaceful demonstrators camped on federal land near Cannon Ball where some 761 people were arrested between early August, 2016 and late February, 2017. Trump apparatchiks even referred to the American Indians and their compatriots as jihadists and insurgents. In 2017 a US District Court ordered the US Army Corps of Engineers to finish a review of ETP's Dakota Excess pipeline, its impact on tribal interests and how a spill under the Oahe Dam would impact water rights for the Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, Yankton and Oglala Lakota nations. 

Even before Statehood the US Army Corps of Engineers has had purview over water that flows into bodies that can support navigation. In 2020 Justice Department attorney Matthew Marinelli said in a status report to Judge James Boasberg the Corps had met with representatives of each tribe and made progress on their concerns. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe wasn't satisfied and the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe created a website to raise funding and awareness for the dispossession of treaty land, natural resources and to provide information about the nation's battles against the Dakota Excess and Keystone XL Pipelines. 

A lawyer for the Corps said they would "finish its consideration and analysis of the information submitted by the tribes and consider issues identified at the meetings with the tribes" by August, 2018 but the Trump Organization ordered the Corps expedite the environmental review and many of the findings available to the public were redacted. 

Public comments were aired Wednesday and Thursday on five options the Corps is considering for the pipeline, including leaving it as is, re-routing it to north of Bismarck or abandoning it.

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