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Michael Westbrook Jr., a Native American activist, protests the Dakota Access Pipeline in Los Angeles on December 3, 2016.Ronen Tivony/NurPhoto via ZUMA Press
This story was first published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
The federal government and the Dakota Access Pipeline’s parent company, Energy Transfer Partners, misled the public, used substandard science, utilized poor technology, and broke the law by not cooperating with impacted Indigenous Nations. That’s according to a new report that also criticizes the Army Corp of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency for not completing a realistic analysis of the environmental damage the pipeline could cause.
NDN Collective wrote the report, an Indigenous nonprofit, provides the first comprehensive timeline of the controversial pipeline’s legal and environmental violations. Working with a team of engineers, the report’s authors included new information about oil quality, spills, leakage, and faulty infrastructure that NDN Collective says could be pivotal in the ongoing battle to stop the pipeline.
This report comes as the Army Corps of Engineers is completing a new, with tribes awaiting it. A court-mandated Environmental Impact Statement on a section pipeline under Lake Oahe, a reservoir on the Missouri River to which tribes have treaty rights. The EIS will be released in September and a public comment period after that. NDN Collective, tribes, as well as other environmental groups, are also included. Appelling to the Biden administration not to allow the pipeline to continue. The pipeline continues to be operational, transporting 750,000 barrels per day.
“This report shows how the Army Corps of Engineers violated their own processes, and continues to violate our human rights for the benefit of a destructive, violent, and extractive energy company,” said Nick Tilsen and Oglala Lakota are the CEOs of NDN Collective.. “We cannot sit on the sidelines with this information. It’s time for accountability and it’s time to shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline, once and for all.”
The pipeline has been the focal point of an international effort to stop it since 2016. Construction began in 2016 but was completed by 2017.
“If the tribes were equipped with this information back in 2015, we could have won the fight. The fight for DAPL would have been very different,” said Jade Begay, Diné and Tesuque Pueblo of New Mexico, Climate Justice Campaign Director at NDN Collective.
Begay stated that the report can be used to complement the work of activists and to fight the pipeline at a policy level, but emphasizes that it is the company, federal government agencies and the company that must complete accurate studies and share information with stakeholders.
“Infrastructure should be done right from the beginning,” she said. “Vulnerable communities that are often Black, brown and Indigenous should not have to bear the burden of doing the work for these entities and agencies.”
