Hundreds Hold Out as Deadline Looms for Dakota Access Pipeline Protest Camp, Blake Nicholson

Hundreds Hold Out as Deadline Looms for Dakota Access Pipeline Protest Camp, Blake Nicholson

• As dawn breaks over an encampment that was once home to thousands of people protesting the Dakota Access oil pipeline, a few hundred holdouts rise for another day of resistance
• They aren't deterred by the threat of flooding, nor by declarations from state and federal authorities that they must leave by Wednesday or face possible arrest
• They're determined to remain and fight a pipeline they maintain threatens the very sanctity of the land
• Protesters have been at the campsite since August to fight the $3.8 billion pipeline that will carry oil from North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa to a shipping point in Illinois 
• Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners began work on the last big section of the pipeline this month after the Army gave it permission to lay pipe under a reservation on the Missouri River
• The protest camp is on Army Corp of Engineers land nearby 
• The protests have been led by Native American tribes: Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux whose reservation is downstream
• They say the pipeline threatens drinking water and cultural sites
• Energy Transfer Partners disputes that the pipeline threatens these things
• Standing Rock Sioux Charirman Dave Archambault has urged protesters to leave
• Archambault said he continues to ask that there be no forced removal of remaining campers
• One concern is that floodwaters could wash tons of trash and debris at the encampment into the nearby rivers 
• Burgam said one of the biggest environmental threats to the Missouri is the camp itself 
• 700 arrests 
• Burgum said the ideal situation is zero arrests are made because everyone figures out that it's not a place where you want to be when the flood starts to happen