"It’s a very scary situation now with Trump coming into office… we’re all very worried about it,” Parker said. “There’s nothing we can do until it actually happens, so we intend to stay in for the long haul. If we need to go back, if we need to fight again, we will.”
Parked added that Trump’s entire administration has a “climate change denier’s stance.”
Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), which is behind the pipeline project, claimed the USACE’s move was a "political decision."
“We are not very excited to hear that the Energy Transfer Partners company has come out… with a statement saying they intend to continue to drill and build anyway, and they’re going to disregard the Army Corps statement,” Parker stated.
ETP, Parker suggested, is objecting because they feel they have already built the entire pipeline and this is the last remaining piece. Parker added that the Dakota Access Pipeline drilling permits expire January 1, 2017.
Last week, North Dakota’s governor issued evacuation orders with a Monday deadline that applied to protesters in the Oceti Sakowin camp. More than 2,000 US military veterans showed up to the camp on Sunday to prevent protesters from being forcibly removed by law enforcement.
Members of the Standing Rock Sioux Native American tribe claim the pipeline would affect their water sources and violate sacred land. The nearly 1,200-mile pipeline is intended to transport domestically produced light crude oil from North Dakota through the states of South Dakota and Iowa into Illinois.
