The Dakota Access Pipeline Battle Isn't Over. Here's What's Coming Next

On December 4, 2016, the Army Corps of Engineers stunned the world when they announced they would prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), a proposed 1,172-mile oil pipeline crossing four states. The pipeline would bulldoze sacred sites at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. After nearly a year of protests that mesmerized millions—complete with encampments of as many as 7,000 people in tents, teepees, and temporary housing—the tribal members and activists achieved something remarkable. As Amnesty International UK tweeted, it was “a monumental victory.”

Even so, the battle to reroute or simply suspend the pipeline is far from over. And one wonders how the situation ever became so extreme—to the point where water protectors were shot with water cannons in below-freezing weather, attacked by security dogs, and ordered to evacuate—that more than 500 people were arrested. Nighttime temperatures plummeted even further, but the protestors stayed. Why and how, as Bill Moyers asked, did Standing Rock come to symbolize so much more than one pipeline and one people? As a tribal member Kandi Mossett told Moyers: “‘They told us, ‘You are crazy. It is a done deal.’ They told us that about the Keystone XL and they are telling us that now about Dakota Access, that it is a done deal. We respectfully disagree.”

https://www.good.is/articles/dakota-access-pipeline-spill-laws-explained