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One hundred and fifty Iowans converged on an active construction site in Boone County, Iowa. Nineteen activists were arrested while peacefully blocking an access road to the construction site. The action came one day after President Obama halted construction in North Dakota at the Missouri River crossing. Obama's ruling did not halt construction in Iowa, where the governor has supported the project from the beginning.
I spoke with two landowners with land adjacent to the protest. Both opposed the use of eminent domain to force landowners to allow the pipeline to cross through their lands. The owner of the land across the road from the protest pointed to his well, which is only 100 yards from the pipeline. He called the process that got the project approved in Iowa corrupt.
Carolyn Raffensperger, the executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network, said that Obama's decision to delay the pipeline's crossing of the Missouri River offers hope that on other stretches of land where the Army Corp of Engineers has to issue permits, there might be similar action.
This was the second protest that ended in arrests in the last two weeks in Iowa, where a coalition of groups has vowed to continue to risk arrest to stop construction of the pipeline.
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