Tribes’ battle over Dakota Access pipeline not over

BISMARCK, N.D. >> American Indian tribes fighting the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline said Tuesday that the pumping of oil into the pipe under their water source is a blow, but it doesn’t end their legal battle. Industry groups say the imminent flow of oil through the pipeline is good news for energy and infrastructure.

The comments come after Texas-based developer Energy Transfer Partners said Monday that it has placed oil in a section of the pipeline under a Missouri River reservoir that’s upstream from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota. It was the final piece of construction for a pipeline that will carry crude from western North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields 1,200 miles through South Dakota and Iowa to a distribution point near Patoka, Illinois. The pipeline should be fully operational in about three weeks, according to company spokeswoman Vicki Granado.

“We need to build pipelines, roads, rail and transmission lines to grow our economy and secure our nation’s energy future,” North Dakota Republican U.S. Sen. John Hoeven said.

Cheyenne River Sioux Chairman Harold Frazier said Sioux tribes in the Dakotas still believe they ultimately will persuade a judge to shut down the pipeline that they maintain threatens cultural sites, drinking water and religion.

“My people are here today because we have survived in the face of the worst kind of challenges,” he said. “The fact that oil is flowing under our life-giving waters is a blow, but it hasn’t broken us.”

Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault called oil under the lake “a setback, and a frightening one at that.” But he and Phillip Ellis, spokesman for the Earthjustice environmental law nonprofit, which is representing that tribe, said they are confident in the court case.

“The flow of oil under Lake Oahe is a temporary reminder of the pain this pipeline has perpetrated to those that have stood with Standing Rock and the devastation it has wreaked on sacred tribal sites, but hope remains,” Ellis said.

ETP maintains the pipeline is safe and disputes the tribes’ claims.

The legal battle isn’t confined to the Dakotas. In Iowa, the state chapter of the Sierra Club and a group of landowners are appealing a lawsuit challenging the pipeline to the Iowa Supreme Court.