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Resistance should be more than obstinance

On one hand, two scenes couldn’t possibly be any different.

Many North Dakotans are still upset at the spectacle that was the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) protest. Protesters – often in aggregate looking more like a Burning Man audience – expressed their dismay at the legal, approved pipeline project too often through violence, social media misinformation and destruction.

Another scene is a court office somewhere, where polite and professional attorneys representing perfectly viable entities deliver complex documents – documents that while official and delivered through proper channels, still present a risk to the future of our region.

Yet both the DAPL protest and the legal appeals by Manitoba and Missouri to the Northwest Area Water Supply (NAWS) project amount to little more than resistance to the virtually inevitable. While not quite “jousting with windmills,” both are pretty close.

Last week, Manitoba and Missouri announced they will appeal the recent federal court decision supporting NAWS.

Sen. John Hoeven, R-ND, best summed up the situation, Thursday. “The Northwest Area Water Supply has been delayed far too long, and it is unfortunate that Missouri and Manitoba are unwilling to accept the U.S. District Court ruling that found we fulfilled the requirements of NEPA,” Hoeven said. (NEPA stands for the National Environmental Policy Act.)

NAWS was first authorized by Congress in 1986, but it’s been tied up in the courts the last 15 years, according to the Associated Press. Manitoba sued in 2002, when construction began, over concerns about the pipeline’s possible transfer of harmful bacteria or other agents from the Missouri River Basin to the Hudson Bay Basin north of the border. Missouri sued in 2009 over fears that the pipeline would deplete one of its key sources of water. However, the U.S. District Court ruled this summer the water project may proceed. Accordingly, the court dismissed the lawsuits brought against the project, lifted the injunction and allowed the project to proceed.

One might assume that the issue was brought to a close this summer, even if Manitoba and Missouri asserted the probability of an appeal. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the parties exerting their right to appeal. However, at a certain point and after a lengthy process and period of time, it can’t help but appear a delay tactic with no real chance of the outcome the protesting entities desire.

Resistance should have more productive potential results. At the DAPL site, it turned into a mass temper tantrum. One would hope other disagreements amount to better than that.

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