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The clean-up
marked cooperation among authorities and camp organizers. The
decision to clean the site, where a few hundred protesters
remain, was made on Sunday by state and local officials and
members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe.
Those involved said it was not an effort to destroy the camp,
which sits on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land, but a move to
prevent waste contaminating water sources.
"I’m not going to run people’s camps over. I’m not going to take
anyone’s property or do anything like that," Hans Youngbird
Bradley, a construction contractor from the Standing Rock Sioux
tribe said during the meeting.
There are dozens of abandoned cars and structures as well as
waste at the camp.
“It is paramount for public safety, and to prevent an
environmental disaster, that the camps be cleared prior to a
potential spring flood,” said North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum,
a Republican who supports the completion of the pipeline, in a
statement.
Land is being leased on the Standing Rock Reservation for
protesters who wish to remain in the area.
Protesters rallied for months against plans to route the $3.8
billion pipeline beneath Lake Oahe near the Standing Rock Sioux
reservation, saying it threatened water resources and sacred
Native American sites.
At one point, nearly 10,000 people had flocked to the site. But
the number dwindled to several hundred after the Standing Rock
Sioux asked activists to leave when a permit to drill under the
lake was denied in December.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week to
speed up the completion of the project, dealing a blow to
protesters.
(Writing by Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago; Editing by Cynthia
Osterman)
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