Thursday, September 08, 2016

Indian burial sites desecrated by Energy Transfer Crude Oil

From Monique Teal, Daily Kos:

During the Labor Day weekend, when many people are celebrating and preparing for the upcoming school-year, Dakota Access, a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Crude Oil, began bulldozing American Indian burial sites to make room for a new dirty oil pipeline.When protesters put their bodies between the bulldozers and the ancestral land, private security guards used attack dogs and pepper spray, injuring dozens of people, including children. 

The burial and ceremonial sites were only identified by experts a few days earlier. In order to stop construction on these sites, the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) needed to officially survey the area. However, before they were able to do so, Dakota Access plowed through the land, destroying unknown numbers of graves and artifacts. Activists on the ground report workers were building 15 miles away and deliberately dozed the site before SHPO could survey it.

Tell President Obama: Instruct the Army Corps of Engineers to revoke permits and stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline, which is about as long as the Keystone XL, cuts through state and private farmland and American Indian ancestral and treaty land. The 1,170-mile pipeline will transport approximately 450,000 barrels of crude oil a day, fracked from North Dakota’s oil-rich Bakken Formation, to Illinois. 

The Army Corps of Engineers fast-tracked the Dakota Access pipeline permits using the "Nationwide Permit No. 12" process. The fossil fuel industry has increasingly used this process to move unpopular projects through with little environmental review or public input. 

Sign the petition: Stop the Dakota Access oil pipeline.

Energy Transfer Crude Oil claims the pipeline is safe but as we've learned, pipelines burst.During 2012-2013 alone, there were 300 oil pipeline breaks in North Dakota. When the Dakota Access pipeline breaks, it will not only contaminate a critical water source but it will also destroy sacred land and threaten individual, societal and community health. 

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has been holding the line -- through the courts and their physical presence at the construction site -- in opposition to the pipeline since April, citing two major concerns: The pipeline would pass under the Missouri River just a half a mile upstream of the tribe’s reservation boundary, where a spill would be catastrophic, and the pipeline would pass through sacred sites and burial grounds that federal law seeks to protect. 

On-going peaceful protests and civil disobedience managed to significantly slow the construction of the pipeline -- halting building for days at a time. But the pipeline is still scheduled to move forward. 

Keystone XL was ultimately defeated because of massive public pressure. We can beat this pipeline too. Now is the time to stand with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and local leaders who are protecting our water and land from this dangerous pipeline. 

Tell President Obama: Instruct the Army Corps of Engineers to revoke permits and stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.


Keep fighting,
Monique Teal, Daily Kos

The Powerful Interests Backing the Dakota Access Pipeline


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