The Native American-led protest attempting to stop construction of the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation has gained steam, with protesters streaming in from around the country.
Pipeline opponents are waiting for a federal judge to rule on their request for an injunction against the pipeline company, Energy Transfer. They want a more thorough permitting process that takes into account threats to the reservation’s water supply and the tribe’s cultural practices. Those concerns were echoed by three federal agencies earlier this year, and appear to have been downplayed by the Army Corps of Engineers when it approved a plan to reroute the pipeline near Standing Rock.
InsideClimate News reporter Phil McKenna traveled to the protest site this week, and documented the protest in photos.
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Thank you,
Phil McKenna
Reporter, Boston
Phil McKenna is a Boston-based reporter for Inside Climate News. Before joining ICN in 2016, he was a freelance writer covering energy and the environment for publications including The New York Times, Smithsonian, Audubon and WIRED. Uprising, a story he wrote about gas leaks under U.S. cities, won the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award and the 2014 NASW Science in Society Award. Phil has a master’s degree in science writing from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was an Environmental Journalism Fellow at Middlebury College.
