Dakota Access pipeline owners sue protesters

Associated Press

BISMARCK, N.D.

Developers of a $3.8 billion, four-state oil pipeline sued in federal court Monday to stop protesters near an American Indian reservation in North Dakota from interfering with the project, alleging the safety of workers and law enforcement is at risk.

Dakota Access LLC filed a lawsuit against Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman David Archambault II and other protesters, seeking restraining orders and unspecified monetary damages.

The protesters “have created and will continue to create a risk of bodily injury and harm to Dakota Access employees and contractors, as well as to law-enforcement personnel and other individuals at the construction site,” the company wrote in court papers.

Archambault was among several protesters charged last week with disorderly conduct or criminal trespass at the construction site near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation that straddles the North Dakota-South Dakota border.

The tribe sued federal regulators last month for approving the pipeline, which will take crude oil from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota to Illinois and cross the Missouri River just upstream of the reservation. The tribe says the pipeline would disturb sacred sites and affect drinking water for thousands of residents on the reservation and millions who rely on it downstream.

Archambault told reporters Monday that he was arrested for “doing what everybody else was doing: demonstrating.” He said he expected more arrests and acts of civil disobedience to continue, calling the pipeline “a black poisonous snake” that “is made from nothing but greed.”