Bakken pipeline will run under sacred tribal site

State officials have lifted a stop-work order on the Bakken oil pipeline in northwest Iowa where tribal officials had objected to disrupting sacred American Indian land that includes burial grounds.

Texas-based Dakota Access LLC, which is building the pipeline, has been granted an amendment to its sovereign lands construction permit by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, DNR spokesperson Kevin Baskins confirmed.

Instead of digging a trench for a route through the Big Sioux River Wildlife Management Area in Lyon County, the pipeline will be located about 85 feet underground by using special boring equipment, he said.

"The bottom line is that they will go around the area by going underneath it," Baskins said.

State Archaeologist John Doershuk said in an email last week to DNR Director Chuck Gipp that the proposed directional boring construction method is a satisfactory avoidance procedure from an archaeological standpoint that he supports in this case. However, Doershuk emphasized he could not speak for American Indian tribes that have expressed concerns about the pipeline project.

RELATED:

• Native history, Bakken pipeline clash in Iowa's Blood Run area
• Despite critics, Bakken pipeline gets go-ahead in Iowa

The pipeline project has drawn attention to a little-known area of rich historical and cultural significance in Iowa’s history. An estimated 6,000 to 10,000 people lived 500 years ago in a vast complex of villages along Blood Run Creek and the Big Sioux River, the largest known in the Oneota cultural tradition and larger than any Lyon County town today.

The pipeline will carry crude oil from North Dakota's Bakken oil patch through South Dakota and Iowa to Patoka, Ill. A stop-work order was issued in May for construction work on a section of pipeline in far northwest Iowa where the Sioux Indians had ceded land to the federal government through a treaty signed in 1851. Doershuk subsequently visited the site with tribal leaders and state and federal officials, and he recommended avoiding a disruption of the area. He described the site as having significant cultural and historical importance to the Upper Sioux Community, Standing Rock Sioux tribe and other Sioux people.

Dallas Goldtooth, a member of the Lower Sioux Indian Community in Minnesota and an organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network, said Monday his organization opposes the Iowa DNR's decision to allow the pipeline to be constructed through the Big Sioux River Wildlife Management Area. He believes there may be additional sites of cultural and historic significance to tribal people that have not been discovered along the pipeline route, particularly in South Dakota.

"It is disheartening that they have a green light to move ahead, but I feel very confident that there are a number of landowners, tribes and well-informed citizens who will be standing up to make sure that this pipeline does not get built," Goldtooth said.

Carolyn Raffensperger of Ames, an environmental lawyer and executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network, which opposes the pipeline, said she believes Dakota Access has engaged in a needless rush to construct the pipeline before all government permits have been acquired. The Iowa Utilities Board recently voted to permit pipeline construction to begin in Iowa in areas where permission has already been approved.

"We don't even know if they can complete the project because they don't have permits from the Corps of Engineers," Raffensperger said.

Allen Marshall, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Rock Island, Ill., said Monday that no Corps permits have been issued for the Iowa section of the pipeline route. The permits are needed where the pipeline would cross wetlands, streams and other waters. He said negotiations are ongoing with tribal representatives, state historical preservation officials, and Dakota Access.

Dakota Access officials didn't immediately respond Monday to a request for comment.