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Water protectors on trial again as Greenpeace case begins in North Dakota • North Dakota Monitor [1]
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Date: 2025-02-24
It’s been eight years since the water protectors were cleared off the banks of the Cannonball and Missouri rivers. It was a bitter ending to a battle to protect the water, and for most of us water protectors, we have not seen a lot of justice, particularly in North Dakota.
The winter of 2016-17 was a mean one. North Dakota proposed laws making it illegal to wear a face mask while committing a crime; another law was proposed to remove the liability for a driver who hit someone with a car if they were intentionally blocking traffic. And they didn’t want us to use the phrase “water protector,” instead the intention is to use the term” protester,” which has a very different meaning.
There were a lot of charges – 800 or so people were charged with misdemeanors and felonies – and Energy Transfer Partners put in a pipeline. With President Trump’s last ascension to power, the pipe was operational within months. The Indians lost once again. That’s the North Dakota playbook for sure.
Despite all that, you can still catch the Standing Rock story in court. It turns out that North Dakota still wants someone to pay for that $38 million that they lavished on the military presence at Standing Rock, and Energy Transfer Partners seems to want someone to say that they are nice guys and that pipelines are our friends.
North Dakota v. USA
In March of last year, I was a federal witness in the North Dakota v. United States of America trial in Bismarck, where North Dakota charged that the United States Army Corps of Engineers had caused the Standing Rock resistance by issuing a conditional use permit for the flood plain. Attorneys asked if I came to Standing Rock resistance camp because the Army Corps issued a permit. My response: No. I came for the water, and I came because LaDonna Brave Bull Allard asked me to come. I came because Enbridge, the Canadian pipeline company, had proposed a Sandpiper pipeline across our territory in northern Minnesota and we defeated them, only to find that they later financed 28% of the Dakota Access Pipeline. I came for the water.
Energy Transfer v. Greenpeace
There’s another big trial starting Monday in Mandan, too, in Morton County District Court. There, Judge James Gion will preside over a jury trial in the case of Energy Transfer v. Greenpeace. Energy Transfer charges that Greenpeace effectively orchestrated and was a force driving the Standing Rock resistance. That allegation is pretty surprising to the thousands of people who came to Standing Rock without even hearing about Greenpeace being there. That case will be heard behind closed doors, no livestreaming, and yet somehow a judge in a small county without a law clerk will make sure the justice of a jury trial is carried out. The case with a multitude of pretrial motions is described as the largest in North Dakota history, so carrying out justice, well that’s a challenge.
“This is a pretty ludicrous accusation,” noted Deepa Padmanabha, Greenpeace’s senior legal counsel, responding to charges that Greenpeace effectively orchestrated and was a force driving the Standing Rock resistance. “Standing Rock was one of the largest Indigenous-led protests in history. It was a grassroots-led resistance, and the idea that Greenpeace orchestrated it is a racist attempt to erase Indigenous history.”
But it might be what you’d expect from a company whose CEO once said that protesters who damaged construction equipment should be “removed from the gene pool.”
I’d encourage you to watch the trial online, but unfortunately, Judge Gion has denied a motion to arrange for the trial to be streamed online.
As The Wall Street Journal reported in September, “both sides expect a fossil-fuel-friendly jury.” Check out the “community” page on the company’s daplpipelinefacts. com website and you’ll understand why. There’s a picture of Mandan town employees appreciatively holding up a giant check representing Energy Transfer’s $3 million donation to upgrade the town’s library and other infrastructure.
Energy Transfer is suing Greenpeace for damages, initially proposed at $300 million, in what Greenpeace has called an effort to bankrupt the organization. Greenpeace is the 50-year-old environmental organization which has been part of opposing nuclear testing in the Pacific, saving whales from factory trawlers, and challenging big oil. That’s something you are not supposed to do in North Dakota, it seems, where oil money slicks through all the systems. In North Dakota, the message seems to be, No one should oppose a pipeline project. No one.
Standing Rock Tribe v. U.S. Army Corps
On Oct. 13 of this past year, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe filed a new lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers arguing that the Dakota Access Pipeline is operating illegally and must be shut down. The case was filed in Washington, D.C. This has been an ongoing challenge of the tribe in the federal courts.
The tribe has maintained the Dakota Access Pipeline and the federal government violated the tribe’s sovereignty, endangered sacred cultural sites and threatened to pollute the tribe’s water supply. Among other alleged violations, the Standing Rock complaint argues the Army Corps flouted federal regulations by allowing the pipeline to operate without an easement, sufficient study of possible environmental impacts or the necessary emergency spill response plans: “We are fighting for our rights and the water that is life for Oceti Sakowin tribes,” Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairwoman Janet Alkire said in a statement.
The Standing Rock Sioux have tried many legal challenges to the Dakota Access Pipeline, largely on the basis of procedural violations, including a lack of an Environmental Impact Statement. That draft EIS finally came out six years after the pipeline became operational. Minimally, federal law (in a pre-Trump era, and hopefully a post-Trump era) has some provisions for the silent ones, i.e., trees, fish, mammals, birds, the little people and more. Although the pipeline crosses the water over 200 times, there is still no complete environmental review.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the agency responsible for pipelines, has issued 106 safety violations to Energy Transfer Partners since 2002, including failures to conduct corrosion inspections, to maintain pipeline integrity, and to repair unsafe pipelines in a timely manner (within five years), according to research published by the National Resources Defense Council. According to a report published by Greenpeace and Waterkeeper Alliance, over the span of 15 years, ETP had 527 pipeline incidents that spilled 3.6 million gallons of hazardous liquids. Of these incidents, 275 contaminated soil and 67 sullied water resources. This is not a good track record. If you’re keeping track.
Standing Rock is not only facing the federal government, but now North Dakota, 13 other states and Energy Transfer have intervened on the side of the Army Corps. The states contend that stopping the pipeline would cause them great harm. In court filings the states claim that “DAPL plays a vital role in ensuring the nation’s crops can come to market — not because DAPL itself transports agricultural products, but because every barrel of oil that DAPL transports is a barrel that does not take space in a truck or a train that does. ….Now, crops, livestock, and oil can flow to where they need to go so that Americans can live with cheap energy and healthy food. On those grounds, Iowa, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and West Virginia — all states with Republican governors — intervened to protect their “vital sovereignty and economies.”
It’s nice to see distant states recognizing the importance of “vital sovereign and economic interests.” Maybe they ought to consider the “vital sovereign and economic interests” of Standing Rock and other tribes whose traditional territorial lands and waters are contaminated and risked by Energy Transfer actions.
It looks pretty much like North Dakota is committed to punishing water protectors, not polluters. But you can get a front row seat to see it all go down in Mandan starting this week, where water protectors will again be put on trial. Maybe this chapter of the playbook will show some mercy on water and water protectors.
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[1] Url:
https://northdakotamonitor.com/2025/02/24/greenpeace-dakota-access-trial-commentary/
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