The Dakota Access Pipeline is not about oil. It’s not about energy independence. It’s not about jobs, and it’s not about Native Americans. It’s about money. The $3.8 billion project would stand to make a lot of money for Energy Transfer Partners and the big banks funding it.

But what are the risks? Turns out we don’t even know what all the environmental risks are, because the project has never undergone a sufficient environmental impact study. The Trump administration has signed an order to move forward without it. What we know for sure is that Sunoco, the company scheduled to operate the pipeline, has seen more than 200 spills since 2010, more than any other pipeline operator in the country.

There haven’t been this many indigenous people gathered together in North America in over a century. More than a thousand veterans came, too. They considered it their patriotic duty to again put their bodies on the line in defense of what they believed in. Now that the pipeline’s back on, they’re going back to Standing Rock.

The worst part is that President Trump claims that he has heard no complaints about the pipeline and that it wasn’t even a controversy in the first place. Show him that it is a controversy by continuing to talk about it, donating money to the legal defense fund, standing in solidarity at protests, and calling our members of Congress.

Isabella Pardales
Yarmouth 

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