Pipeline to be Rerouted

[Phoebe]

Wow, just heard they are going to re-route the Dakota Access Pipeline so that it doesn't cross under the river/lake just north of Standing Rock. That is amazing. Apparently one woman is likely to lose her eye and another has lost most of her arm, due to being shot by tear gas canisters and some unknown device. The woman whose arm was blown up, her father is a lawyer who may have the wherewithall and funding to take legal action. The doctors have recovered the fragments of whatever was thrown at her so that they can have proof she's not lying about what happened to her. It is really sad that law enforcement felt it necessary to attack these people violently. In our post-truth, post-facts age, I saw several news stories simply repeat as fact, without any evidence, the claim that the protesters were violent, even though there is lots of video showing the opposite. It should be pretty easy to back up those claims. If they were, for instance, throwing propane bombs at police as claimed, why hide the proof? I think they knew a very bad PR situation was about to happen when the veterans showed up thousands strong to support the protests, and that it was only going to grow. When you have to turn fire hoses on old ladies it makes us think of Alabama and the civil rights struggle. When you start shooting things at young women and blowing out their eyes and arms, more people start wondering why you had to do that. I have a hard time believing elderly old ladies I saw knocked over with water hoses and pepper sprayed in the face were a serious threat to a line of police in riot gear, but who knows. Maybe they're very powerful, dangerous old women.

[poorpete]

2016, hmm, maybe not all bad?

Wish the reasoning had more to do with sacred lands and treaties, thus setting some precedents, but it'll do.

[akiva]

Is this something that Trump can quickly change?

[Phoebe]

I have heard conflicting information about that. At the very least it's not an instant change he can make. There is a process for these approvals and to violate it would raise much larger issues than simply the change of opinion.

The real issue is that the company who started building without having all of this finally resolved is in some deep doo-doo right now. They have to negotiate contracts with those to whom they were supposed to start supplying oil in 2017, and it's not clear that they'll be able to negotiate an acceptable deal now that the price of oil has tanked compared to what it was when they first negotiated prices. I would not want to own their stock right now; let's put it that way. I have absolutely no sympathy because this is something they should and could have anticipated and dealt with but just chose to try to steamroll over people.

[Mike]

It would surprise me if Trump's administration reversed this. For the pipeline people, this is not about right and wrong... it's more about money and appearances. Having veterans there means that for the pipeline to hold its ground, it would need to start using its thug tactics on veterans. That's the sort of thing nobody wants to be involved in. If they have a plan in place and are moving forward now, then they will just continue to move forward.

[Phoebe]

Yeah they definitely don't want a situation where they have a line of veterans facing off against the line of cops in riot gear. The video of some of the arrests and the water cannons and the other tactics is just horrid. They were firing things from very close or point-blank range. This is why you have women fighting to save what they can of an eye and an arm right now. For some reason I don't think it would go over well in the public relations department for them to land a veteran in that situation in a hospital bed.

Every argument being made right now about how the pipeline will have no negative impact would have applied double if they had taken the original location at a narrower river crossing north of the city but for some odd reason they didn't seem to want to do that, seeing how safe it is. Especially in a big rush to the deadline.