What you need to know about Trump’s new course of action affecting #NoDapl
On January 24, 2017, President Trump signed off on his first ever executive actions as president. Two of these actions allowed the continuation of the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Keystone XL pipelines; both are extremely controversial based on their location and the amount of environmental damage they are expected to cause. The Dakota pipelines pose a serious threat to the sanitation of tribal, and American, water supplies and harshly disregard treaty rights. Trump also directed the maximum increase use of U.S steel for the construction of these pipelines.
In response to the President’s seemingly brash movement, Standing Rock’s Sioux tribe announced that they will be taking legal action against the pipeline saying, “President Trump is legally required to honor our treaty rights and provide a fair and reasonable pipeline process.” There is a prevalent fear that the pipelines are not stable enough to guarantee safety from oil spills. The indigenous people’s trepidation is justified by the fact that there have been 200 reported crude oil spills per year and more than 176,000 gallons of oil spilled in western North Dakota last December alone.
Trump’s supposed intention for the construction of the pipelines is to create more jobs. However, the pipelines will only account for 15% of the jobs in North Dakota. Pipeline opponents argue to reroute the system to conserve the safety of Standing Rock’s water; their proposal would, in fact, create hundreds of jobs – more than the original 15% purported by Trump. David Archamabault, the chairman of the Standing Rock tribe says, “We are not opposed to energy independence. We are opposed to reckless and politically motivated development projects that ignore our treaty rights and risk our water. Creating a second Flint does not make America great again.”