Judge Delays Injunction Ruling as Native American Pipeline Protest Grows

Lisa Song has published an update on the Dakota Access Pipeline standoff on the Missouri River in North Dakota. The article, published at Inside Climate News, begins:

Activists resisting a controversial oil pipeline in a growing protest camp in Cannon Ball, N.D. hoped to hear a federal judge side with them Wednesday by issuing an injunction stopping its construction. Instead, they learned they may have to wait up to two weeks to hear the judge's decision.

In the meantime, the activists, who have formed a camp of largely Native American protesters that has swelled to more than 1,200 people, vowed to keep fighting.

They were joined in protest by a group of about 300 who gathered outside the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Wednesday to urge Judge James Boasberg to issue the injunction. That group included environmental activists and celebrities, including Susan Sarandon.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, sought a preliminary injunction to stop construction of the 1,172-mile Dakota Access Pipeline. An injunction would give the court time to assess the plaintiffs' claims that the pipeline violates the Clean Water Act and other federal statutes.

Boasberg is now expected to rule on the injunction by Sept. 9.

The article continues:

The delay ensures continued tension between protesters and the company. 

"I think folks are frustrated," said Tara Houska, national campaigns director for Honor the Earth, an indigenous environmental justice group. "I'm frustrated... [But] it is not going to dampen our efforts to ensure this pipeline" doesn't get built, she said.

Houska is among the activists camped out at Sacred Stone Camp, an impromptu community of trailers, teepees and tents four miles north of Cannon Ball.

Dallas Goldtooth, a campaign organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network, said there was "confusion and bewilderment" in the camp when he announced the delayed court decision. (See the full article, here.)

Song is co-author of the "The Dilbit Disaster" series, which won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.

The series described the aftermath of the Kalamazoo River tar sands crude oil spill catastrophe in Michigan, that began in late July 2010. Enbridge of Canada caused the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history, 1.4 million gallons. The billion dollar and rising, so-called cleanup, continues, but oil derivatives continue to surface in the Kalamazoo River, over six years later.

(As reported by RawStory: "Earlier this month, Enbridge Inc...announced it would take a minority stake in the [Dakota Access] pipeline.")