CANNON BALL, N.D. -- The company building a $3.8 billion oil pipeline sought a federal judge's permission Tuesday to circumvent President Barack Obama's administration and move ahead with a disputed section of the project in North Dakota, as opponents held protests across the country.
Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners and a subsidiary asked the court to let them lay pipe under a Missouri River reservoir, a plan the Standing Rock Sioux say threatens their drinking water and cultural sites. The Army Corps of Engineers said Monday that it needs more time to study the effects of the plan.
While President-elect Donald Trump could greenlight the Dakota Access pipeline project when he takes office in January, the company is trying to win federal approval -- or a court order -- to allow it to go forward now. The delay has already cost nearly $100 million, the company said in court documents.
In a statement Tuesday, the company blamed the Obama administration for "political interference" in the pipeline review process.
Protests were being held Tuesday from California to Vermont. Activists called for demonstrations at Army Corps of Engineers offices and at banks financing the pipeline construction.
Twenty-eight protesters were arrested near Mandan, N.D., after a group of about 400 protesters put a truck and tree branches on BNSF Railway tracks near a pipeline work staging area and tried to set a fire, Morton County sheriff's spokesman Rob Keller said.
Trains were delayed three hours, railroad spokesman Amy McBeth said. Officers in riot gear used pepper spray against protesters who refused to leave.
Mandan is about 50 miles north of a camp where hundreds of protesters have gathered in recent months to oppose the pipeline. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental attorney and president of the New York-based Waterkeeper Alliance, which seeks to protect watersheds worldwide, visited the camp Tuesday, speaking out against the arrests and a project he says will benefit billionaires and not the American people.
"What they are doing here is a crime, an environmental crime, and there are real victims," he said.
In Columbus, Ohio, police reported that an activist blocked traffic by handcuffing himself under a vehicle at a downtown intersection. In Montpelier, Vt., more than 100 people gathered outside a bank, chanting, singing and holding signs saying "Water is Life" and "Standing With Standing Rock."
"It may seem hopeless, like David against Goliath, but we believe that if we're persistent and we recruit, that this movement will grow and hopefully these kinds of projects will stop," said protester Lee Shen of Thetford Center, Vt.
The Corps on Monday called for more study and input from the Standing Rock Sioux before it decides whether to allow the pipeline to cross under Lake Oahe. The 1,200-mile pipeline, designed to carry North Dakota oil through South Dakota and Iowa to a shipping point in Illinois, is largely complete except for that stretch, which would skirt the tribe's reservation.
The Corps in July granted Energy Transfer Partners the permits needed for the project, but it said in September that further analysis was warranted, given the tribe's concerns. Its announcement Monday came amid speculation that federal officials were on the brink of approving the crossing.
Energy Transfer Partners disputes that the pipeline would endanger the tribe, and CEO Kelcy Warren noted earlier that Army Assistant Secretary Jo-Ellen Darcy had informed company officials and tribal Chairman Dave Archambault that the Corps' previous permit decisions "comported with legal requirements." The company contends that the Corps has no legal justification for the delay.
Information for this article was contributed by Dave Kolpack and Dave Gram of The Associated Press.
A Section on 11/16/2016