Delegation seeks settlement of Dakota Access protest costs

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — North Dakota’s congressional delegation is calling on President Donald Trump’s administration to address the state’s year-old request for $38 million to cover the cost of policing protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline.

U.S. Sens. John Hoeven and Kevin Cramer and U.S. Rep. Kelly Armstrong sent a letter Thursday urging Attorney General William Barr and Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan to settle the state’s claim, the Bismarck Tribune reported.

North Dakota’s attorney general filed an administrative claim against the Army Corps of Engineers last year, accusing the agency of letting protesters illegally camp on federal land in North Dakota in 2016 and 2017. It also argued the Corps didn’t maintain law and order when thousands gathered to protest the $3.8 billion pipeline built by Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners.

The pipeline was designed to move North Dakota oil through South Dakota and Iowa to a shipping point in Illinois.

The Corps inaction “required North Dakota to provide a sustained, large-scale public safety response to prevent deaths, and protect property and public safety, including that of the protesters,” Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem wrote in the funding request at the time.

The state delegation is now asking Barr and Shanahan to recognize the state’s public safety response during the prolonged and sometimes violent protests.

Justice Department spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle declined to comment on the delegation’s letter. The Defense Department also didn’t immediately provide comment.

The delegates’ request came on the same day that a federal appeals court ordered the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by environmental and Native American groups who sought to block construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Opponents of the $8 billion pipeline from Canada to the U.S. have threatened similar protests to those against the Dakota Access pipeline.

By Associated Press, June 12, 2019

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Standing Rock Sioux tribe challenges Corps findings on Dakota Access pipeline

A Standing Rock Sioux flag flies over a protest encampment near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, where members of the Standing Rock nations and their supporters gathered to voice their opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline. (Photo by Robyn Beck/Getty Images)

The Standing Rock Sioux tribe, which is leading a four-tribe lawsuit against the four-state pipeline built by Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners, in court documents filed Thursday asked a federal judge to reject the findings.

“The corps has conducted a sham process to arrive at a sham conclusion, for the second time,” tribal Chairman Mike Faith said in a statement.

The pipeline has the capacity to move half of the oil produced daily in North Dakota, the nation’s second-leading producer behind Texas. It passes just north of the Standing Rock Reservation, beneath a Missouri River reservoir that is the tribe’s water source.

The pipeline has been moving North Dakota oil through South Dakota and Iowa to a shipping point in Illinois since June 2017. That same month, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled that the Corps largely complied with environmental law when permitting the pipeline but needed to do more study of its impact to tribal rights. The Corps filed its work with the court in late August.

Standing Rock’s challenge says the Corps “failed to grapple with extensive technical input provided by the tribe and others undermining its conclusions.” The major example the tribe offered is information it says shows the Corps has underestimated the risk and impact of an oil spill.

The tribe continues to maintain that the only lawful way to resolve the matter would be through a full environmental study that includes consideration of route alternatives.

The Corps had planned to do a more extensive environmental study before President Donald Trump took office in January 2017 and pushed through completion of the stalled project. The agency said in court documents in August that the additional study concluded a more thorough review is unwarranted. The tribe asks Boasberg to reject that conclusion.

By Associated Press

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‘Major Victory’: Landowner’s Legal Challenge Halts Construction of Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana

Faced with a new state law that effectively criminalized peaceful protests of pipelines, activists have put their bodies and freedom on the line to oppose the Bayou Bridge project in Louisiana. (Photo: L’eau Est La Vie Camp/Facebook)

By Jessica Corbett

In a “major victory” for local landowners and pipeline activists who are fighting to block the Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana, the company behind the project agreed to halt construction on a patch of private property just ahead of a court hearing that was scheduled for Monday morning.

The path of the 163-mile pipeline runs through Atchafalaya Basin, the nation’s largest wetland and swamp. Local landowners and activists have raised alarm about the threat the pipeline poses to regional water resources, wildlife, and communities.

“We have been tased, pepper sprayed, put into choke holds, and beaten with batons to stop this illegal construction that ETP was carrying out despite not having an easement for the land.”  —L’eau Est La Vie Camp

Peter Aaslestad, one of several co-owners of undeveloped marshland, filed an injunction in July alleging that the Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) was clearing trees and trenching on his property without permission. ETP—which is also behind the hotly contested Dakota Access Pipeline—claims it has the right to the use property through expropriation, a process used to take private land for public benefit.

Monday’s agreement “essentially gives us everything we would have asked for with [the injunction] request and argued for in our hearing,” Misha Mitchell, a lawyer for Aaslestad and Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, explained in a Facebook video. “The company has voluntarily agreed to cease entering onto the property and to stop all construction activities on the property.”

A court hearing for the expropriation battle is scheduled for Nov. 27, meaning the company will not meet its initial deadline of completing construction by October.

“This represents a significant victory for the conservation of the Atchafalaya Basin and for the rights of private landowners who lawfully resist their property being seized for private gain,” Aaslestad said in a statement.

A collective of activists fighting against the pipeline—who have created the L’eau Est La Vie (Water Is Life) floating resistance camp—celebrated the agreement as validation of their ongoing efforts to kill the project.

“We have been tased, pepper sprayed, put into choke holds, and beaten with batons to stop this illegal construction that ETP was carrying out despite not having an easement for the land,” the group wrote on Facebook Monday. “While this is a major victory, construction of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline continues in other parts of the Atchafalaya Basin. We won’t stop until completely shut down the Bayou Bridge Pipeline.”

Protests have continued even as state lawmakers have enacted legislation that effectively criminalizes peaceful protests of “critical infrastructure,” including pipeline projects. Last month, as Common Dreams reported, three kayaktivists who oppose Bayou Bridge were detained by private security, then arrested and charged with felonies under the new law.

The Times-Picayune reports that “at least 12 activists protesting the pipeline on Aaslestad’s property have been arrested” under the law, which took effect Aug. 1, but the district attorney “has not yet decided whether to prosecute the protesters.”

Bill Quigley, a Loyola University law professor who is volunteering as an attorney for the protesters, said they were all detained by private security before being arrested, explaining that “because they were on private property at the invitation of the owner, it’s not clear that [ETP] had any right to do what they were doing, or have people arrested.”

Published on September 10, 2018 by Common Dreams

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Greenpeace wants Dakota Access racketeering suit dismissed

Protesters march along the pipeline route during a protest against the Dakota Access pipeline near  Standing Rock, North Dakota. REUTERS

BISMARCK, N.D. — The lone remaining environmental group facing racketeering accusations by the developer of the Dakota Access oil pipeline has asked a federal judge to be dismissed from the case.

Greenpeace attorneys on Tuesday filed documents arguing that revised allegations by Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act are “generalized and implausible.”

ETP initially sued Greenpeace, Earth First and BankTrack last year for up to $1 billion, alleging they worked to undermine the $3.8 billion pipeline that’s now shipping North Dakota oil to a distribution point in Illinois. The lawsuit alleged the groups interfered with company business, facilitated crimes and acts of terrorism, incited violence, targeted financial institutions that backed the project, and violated defamation and racketeering laws. The groups maintained the lawsuit was an attack on free speech.

U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson this summer dismissed both BankTrack and Earth First as defendants. In July, he denied a motion by Greenpeace to be dismissed, as well, but he also ordered ETP to revise the lawsuit that he said contained vague claims. Company lawyers did so last month.

Greenpeace attorneys maintain that “ETP has utterly failed to follow the court’s direction,” and that the amended lawsuit “contains much the same inflammatory, insubstantial language” as before.

ETP spokeswoman Vicki Granado declined comment, citing company policy against commenting on active litigation.

Company lawyers on Tuesday asked Wilson to reconsider his late August order that the company identify 20 unnamed individual defendants in its lawsuit within a month or have them dismissed as defendants. ETP wants the opportunity to gather more evidence to properly identify the people that it alleges played a role in inciting a massive protest against the pipeline while it was being built.

Protests by groups and American Indian tribes who feared environmental harm resulted in 761 arrests in southern North Dakota over a six-month span beginning in late 2016.

ETP also is suing five named individual defendants: two Iowa women who have publicly claimed to have vandalized the pipeline; two people associated with the Red Warrior Camp, a protest group alleged to have advocated aggressive tactics such as arson; and Virginia resident Charles Brown, who the company alleges is “a pipeline campaigner for Greenpeace” and specializes in interfering with ETP projects including the Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana.

Brown filed an affidavit Tuesday stating he began working for Greenpeace after the Dakota Access protests and that “I have never lived in or travelled to North Dakota.”

Greenpeace attorneys called the inclusion of Brown as a defendant “baffling” and “possibly sanctionable.”

By Blake Nicholson – The Associated Press

Source: Nationalpost.com

North Dakota’s Bill for Policing Pipeline Protest now at $39 Million

(Photo by Angus Mordant/Groundtruth)

North Dakota’s bill for policing protests of the Dakota Access pipeline continues to rise.

The North Dakota Emergency Commission is set to borrow an additional $5 million Monday to cover law enforcement costs. That will bring the total line of credit from the state-owned bank of North Dakota to $39 million.

State Emergency Services spokeswoman Cecily Fong says 11 states provided law enforcement help to North Dakota, and some bills are only now arriving.

The $3.8 billion pipeline built by Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners began moving oil from North Dakota to a distribution point in Illinois in June, after months of protests.

The Emergency Commission also is set to approve a $10 million federal grant to help pay state law enforcement bills related to the protests.

The Associated Press

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