Dakota Access Pipeline CEO Kelcy Warren Should Face the Music

Published in Common Dreams by Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan of Democracy Now!

See Democracy Now!'s related coverage:

Who is Kelcy Warren, the Texas Billionaire and Folk Music Fan Behind the Dakota Access Pipeline?

"I Do Not Play for Oil Interests": Jackson Browne to His Biggest Fan, the Billionaire Behind #DAPL

The Indigo Girls Launch #NoDAPL Boycott of Pipeline Owner's Major Folk Music Festival

Standing Rock Chair: Obama Could Stop the Dakota Pipeline Today & Preserve Indigenous Sacred Sites

Also see Democracy Now!'s full coverage of DAPL.

The Black Snake in Sioux Country: A #NoDAPL Map

 The Black Snake in Sioux Country: A #NoDAPL Map

Today's Midwest Energy News headlines/links re: DAPL resistance

PIPELINES: Dakota Access pipeline protests draw scrutiny to a federal fast-track approval process; a 2013 project in Illinois raised similar questions. (Greenwire, Midwest Energy News archive)

CLIMATE:
• Scientists warn the next three years will be our “last chance” to keep global warming at safe levels. (InsideClimate News)
• A Chicago event explores the nexus between energy and water issues. (Medill Reports)

COMMENTARY: “The Dakota and Lakota of the Standing Rock tribe would hardly be the first American Indians to pay the price for white people who want to move environmental hazards out of sight, out of mind and out of their water faucets.” (New York Times)

Industry front group...accused of lawbreaking in pipeline promotion

As reported by Sue Sturgis in Facing South:

A leading front group for the energy industry is coming under scrutiny for fraudulent and potentially illegal activity in its campaign to promote a gas pipeline through Ohio and Michigan into Canada.

Based in Houston, the Consumer Energy Alliance was created and operated by HBW Resources, a high-powered lobbying firm that represents energy interests, and it gets funding from industry groups including the American Petroleum Institute.

The article quotes Toledo-based environmental attorney, Terry Lodge:

Now the industry-backed Alliance is facing allegations that it engaged in potentially criminal activity in its efforts to promote the Nexus Gas Transmission Pipeline in the Midwest. Opponents of the pipeline project say that a slew of letters submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) shortly before a public comment period closed in August were generated by the Alliance, and included potentially hundreds of names from people who didn't consent to their names being used — and in some cases, people who aren't even alive.

Terry Lodge, an attorney representing groups opposed to the pipeline, and pipeline opponent Paul Wohlfarth were tracking the comment letters submitted to federal officials and began contacting signers.

One letter allegedly in support of the pipeline came from a man who died in 1998. Another came from a woman who suffers from dementia and whose son said she would have been unable to write such a letter. In all, Wohlfarth spoke with 14 people whose signatures or those of family members were found on pro-pipeline letters to FERC but who said they did not sign them. He found 200 other letters with very similar language, leading him to suspect the number of fraudulent letters could be higher.

The massive Nexus project would deliver 1.5 billion cubic feet of Appalachian shale gas per day over 225 miles from Ohio to Canada. Houston-based Spectra Energy, an Alliance member, is a partner in the pipeline project along with Michigan-based DTE Energy.

Lodge has long served as legal counsel for Beyond Nuclear, and anti-nuclear environmental coalitions, in the Great Lakes and beyond. This includes fighting Detroit Edison on both its proposed new Fermi 3 atomic reactor, as well as resisting the 20-year license extension at the Fermi 2 atomic reactor (a Fukushima Daiichi twin design).

Lodge also leads the legal work on grassroots anti-fracking efforts in Ohio, extending into Michigan. 

Anti-fracking, anti-nuclear, and anti-oil groups -- including the Water Protectors at Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Reservation in North Dakota, resisting the Dakota Access crude oil Pipeline -- often stand in solidarity. And their adversaries often engage in similar dirty, dangerous, and expensive energy schemes.

Clergy join Dakota Access pipeline protesters for interfaith ceremony

As reported by the Chicago Tribune:

Hundreds of clergy of various faiths joined protests Thursday against the Dakota Access oil pipeline in southern North Dakota, singing hymns, marching and ceremonially burning a copy of a 600-year-old document.

The interfaith event was organized to draw attention to the concerns of the Standing Rock Sioux and push elected officials to call for a halt to construction of the $3.8 billion pipeline that's to carry North Dakota oil through South Dakota and Iowa to a shipping point in Illinois. The tribe believes the pipeline that will skirt its reservation threatens its drinking water and cultural sites.

The pipeline "is a textbook case of marginalizing minority communities in the drive to increase fossil fuel supplies," the Rev. Peter Morales, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, said in a statement. Morales' group sent more than 30 clergy to the event.

More than 500 clergy from around the world gathered with protesters on Thursday at a campfire at the main protest camp to burn a copy of a religious document from the 1400s sanctioning the taking of land from indigenous peoples. About 200 people then sang hymns while they marched to a bridge that was the site of a recent clash between protesters and law officers. Some held signs that read, "Clergy for Standing Rock."

"It's amazing the spirituality going around this place," said Joe Gangone, who came with an Episcopalian church group from South Dakota's Rosebud Sioux Reservation.

The Rev. Tet Gallardo, a Unitarian Universalist minister from the Philippines, said she was "moved to come" to the gathering.

"Water is the subject of concern also in the Philippines," she said. "How can this happen to people who are so faithful to God?"

The group sang and prayed while gathered in a semicircle at the still-closed bridge while law officers monitored from vehicles at a barricade on the other side, from surrounding hillsides and from a helicopter flying overhead.

John Floberg, an Episcopalian minister from the Standing Rock Reservation who organized the event, called for "peaceful, prayerful, nonviolent and lawful activity here." There were no immediate confrontations between group members and authorities, and no arrests, Morton County sheriff's spokesman Rob Keller said.

Later Thursday, 14 protesters were arrested in the judicial wing of the Capitol in Bismarck. Highway Patrol Lt. Tom Iverson said the protesters were sitting, chanting and singing and refused orders to leave. Three other people who refused orders to leave the governor's residence on the Capitol grounds were also arrested. Iverson said the 17 individuals face criminal trespass charges in Burleigh County.

The demonstrators were singing hymns Thursday afternoon in the judicial wing of the Capitol. Highway Patrol Lt. Tom Iverson says they face disorderly conduct charges for refusing to leave when asked.

Their protest followed an interfaith day of prayer in the southern part of the state near the small town of Cannon Ball. Hundreds of clergy sang hymns and marched near the route of the pipeline.

Members of the Standing Rock Sioux have demonstrated against the pipeline for months, saying they fear it could harm drinking water and construction could damage sacred sites.

Opponents of the pipeline project have been camped near the route in southern North Dakota for months in an effort to stop construction. Clashes between protesters and police have resulted in more than 400 arrests since August.

The most recent incident came Wednesday, when law officers in riot gear used pepper spray to deter dozens of protesters who tried to cross a frigid stream to access property owned by the pipeline developer. Two people were arrested. About 140 people were arrested on the property last week in a law enforcement operation that cleared the encampment that protesters had established on the land.

Texas-based developer Energy Transfer Partners has said the 1,200-mile pipeline is largely complete outside of the area in south central North Dakota where it will go under Lake Oahe, a large Missouri River reservoir and the source of the tribe's drinking water. The federal government in September ordered a temporary halt to construction on Army Corps of Engineers land around and beneath the lake while the agency reviews its permitting of the project. There's no timetable for a decision.