“Dakota Access reports that the pilot hole is complete,” said the report, according to the Washington Times. “The company is currently reaming the hole — i.e., making it larger in order to accept the pipe. As of now, Dakota Access estimates and targets that the pipeline will be complete and ready to flow oil anywhere between the week of March 6, 2017, and April 1, 2017.”
The court-ordered status report indicated the final 1,100-foot section of the 1,172-mile, four-state pipeline is nearly completed, and this would enable the pipeline to begin operations months ahead of schedule.
At about the same time the papers were filed in court, the Mortons County Sheriff’s Department began moving water protectors from the Oceti Sakowin encampment, arresting 47 people, including “Grandma Regina” Brave, an 80-something fierce Lakota warrior who in 1973 participated at Wounded Knee when the American Indian Movement occupied the hamlet on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, according to Native News Online.
The state government sent in 220 sheriff’s deputies and 18 National Guardsmen to clear the camp and thoroughly search the tents and other temporary shelters in a process that took three hours. Several of the arrests included a group of military veterans who had to be carried out, reports Salon.
Many people took to social media, labeling Grandma Regina as a “hero” and likening her to civil rights activist, Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama on December 1, 1955, sparking the modern civil rights movement.
Grandma Regina now lives in Oglala on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, where she has continued to speak out against Big Oil, including the Keystone XL pipeline in 2011.
The Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes continue to fight the DAPL, saying the pipeline threatens their drinking water and sacred cultural sites. A lawsuit brought by the tribes wants the pipeline halted until the completion of an environmental impact study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The tribes are also requesting a “meaningful pre-decisional government-to-government consultation.” On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge James A. Boasberg approved an expedited briefing schedule, giving the Corps of Engineers and Energy Transfer Partners until March 23 to respond to the tribes’ request for summary judgment.