California congressman calls for hearing after visiting pipeline protesters in North Dakota
After traveling to North Dakota to see how a proposed oil pipeline might affect a local Sioux tribe, Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Palm Desert) is asking for a congressional hearing to determine whether the Standing Rock Sioux were properly consulted before the Army Corps of Engineers approved permits for the project.
The 1,168-mile-long Dakota Access Pipeline would transport crude oil from North Dakota to refineries in Illinois. The pipeline would cross the Missouri River within a half-mile of the tribe’s reservation and pass through a burial ground and sacred site. It has drawn widespread condemnation from many Native Americans, including Californians who have traveled to North Dakota to join the protest to keep the project from moving forward as tribal officials challenge the Army Corps’ permits in court.
“If this pipeline was too much of a contamination risk for clean waters in the northern route, why would they consider it OK now to put it near Native Americans and their waterways?” Ruiz said in an interview at the Capitol on Tuesday.
Ruiz, who is the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee’s Indian, Insular and Alaska Native Affairs Subcommittee, traveled to the reservation and protesters' campsite Saturday to see how close the pipeline is to the water and a burial ground.
He and House Natural Resources Committee ranking member Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) called for a hearing by the subcommittee in a letter to its chairman Tuesday.
“The tribes have a right to self determination, and a say in policy that can affect their land, their life and their sacred sites,” Ruiz said. “Tribes throughout the country are united under this issue because it goes to the historical trauma that they have faced repeatedly with the lack of federal agencies going through due process with tribes and respecting their sovereignty.”
http://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-sac-essential-politics-updates-california-congressman-calls-for-1473795799-htmlstory.html