Police set to remove pipeline protesters
About 200 activists moved onto the site last weekend.
Law enforcement officials said Wednesday they were poised to remove about 200 protesters trying to halt the completion of the Dakota Access oil pipeline in North Dakota after the demonstrators refused to leave private land owned by the pipeline company.
Officers with county sheriff ’s offices, the state Highway Patrol and the National Guard asked protesters to move off the site on Wednesday morning and were rebuffed. The authorities then left.
Cass County Sheriff Paul Laney later told reporters that authorities don’t want a confrontation but that the protesters “are not willing to bend.”
“We have the resources. We could go down there at any time,” he said. “We’re trying not to.”
Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said authorities would continue to try for a peaceful resolution but that “we are here to enforce the law as needed.”
Protesters vowed to stay put, at one point chanting “Stand in peace against the beast.”
“We’re going to hold this ground,” said protester Mekasi Camp Horinek.
“I’m here to die if I have to. I don’t want to die but I will,” said Didi Banerji, who lives in Toronto but is originally from the Spirit Lake Sioux reservation in North Dakota.
About 200 activists moved onto the site last weekend to block the nearly 1,200-mile pipeline, which they fear could harm cultural sites and drinking water for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe.
Energy Transfer Partners, which is building the $3.8 billion pipeline, said Tuesday that the protesters were trespassing and that “lawless behavior will not be tolerated.”
Protests supporting the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s opposition to the pipeline have continued for months, with more than 260 people arrested so far in North Dakota.
The pipeline is to carry oil from western North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa to an existing pipeline in Patoka, Ill., where shippers can send it on to Midwest and Gulf Coast markets. Energy Transfer Partners has said the pipeline is nearly complete other than the work in south central North Dakota.