Rep. Kevin Cramer
For more than three months, thousands of protesters, most of them
from out of state, have illegally camped on federal land in Morton
County, North Dakota, to oppose the construction of a legally permitted
oil pipeline project that is 85 percent complete.
The celebrities, political activists, and anti-oil extremists who are
blocking the pipeline’s progress are doing so based on highly charged
emotions rather than actual facts on the ground.
This 1,172-mile Dakota Access pipeline will deliver as many as
570,000 barrels of oil a day from northwestern North Dakota through
South Dakota and Iowa to connect to existing pipelines in Illinois. It
will do this job far more safely than the current method of transporting
it by 750 rail cars a day.
The protesters say they object to the pipeline’s being close to the
water intake of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. However, this
should be of no concern as it will sit approximately 92 feet below the
riverbed, with increased pipe thickness and control valves at both ends
of the crossing to reduce the risk of an incident, which is already low.
Just like the companies that run the 10 other fossil-fuel pipelines
crossing the Missouri River upstream of Standing Rock, Energy Transfer
Partners—the primary funder of this pipeline—is taking all necessary
precautions to ensure that the pipeline does not leak.
...From the outset of this process, Standing Rock Sioux leaders have
refused to sit down and meet with either the Army Corps of Engineers or
the pipeline company.
The Army Corps consulted with 55 Native American tribes at least 389
times, after which they proposed 140 variations of the route to avoid
culturally sensitive areas in North Dakota. The logical time for
Standing Rock tribal leaders to share their concerns would have been at
these meetings, not now when construction is already near completion.
...Though these protesters claim to be gathered for peaceful prayer and
meditation, law enforcement has been forced to arrest more than 400 in
response to several unlawful incidents, including trespassing on and
damaging private land, chaining themselves to equipment, burning tires
and fields, damaging cars and a bridge, harassing residents of nearby
farms and ranches, and killing and butchering livestock. There was even
at least one reported incident where gun shots were fired at police.
The recent vandalization of graves in a Bismarck cemetery and the
unconscionable graffiti marking on the North Dakota column at the World
War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., are examples of how the protesters’
actions do not match their claims of peaceful demonstration.
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
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