A showdown looms as thousands of veterans from around the country head to North Dakota to be shield Dakota Access Pipeline protesters from police.
The plan by an unarmed citizens' militia, called Veterans Stand for Standing Rock, coincides with North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple's order to evacuate a protesters' camp near the pipeline construction site in Cannon Ball, N.D., south of Bismarck.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which leases the lands for grazing, has also ordered the camp closed to all public access as of Monday. Both said the threat of approaching winter weather to public safety required their action.
The Corps of Engineers has said it won't forcibly roust the camp, which has grown to an estimated 10,000 people. However, if campers stay, it is at their own risk, officials said. Temperatures can fall to the single digits during the day and below zero at night in winter. Snow and strong winds also arrived this past week.
Emergency services to the camp will not be guaranteed under the Dalrymple's evacuation unless approved case by case by the state Highway Patrol or the Morton County sheriff.
Protesters say they will and about 2,000 veterans are expected to arrive Sunday to join the fight by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and its allies against the pipeline.
The $3.8 billion oil pipeline through four states is finished except for the last portion, where it would cross under the Missouri River, less than a mile from the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. Developer Energy Transfer Partners of Houston has yet to obtain the easement it needs from the Corps of Engineers to cross under the river and finish the project.
A fight over the easement is tied up in federal court, and the company has said in federal court documents that it can't finish the project on schedule by Jan. 1 as it promised in long-term contracts to shippers. The company says it is losing about $2.7 million a day as the project is delayed, and its shippers may cancel their contracts.
No construction or drilling work has begun on either side of the river, said Gary Sanders, the sheriff of Emmons County, across the river from the protest camp. The only people on site at the drilling pads are security personnel, as Energy Transfer Partners waits for the easement to allow drilling under the river, Sanders said. "It's a waiting game."
In a Facebook post, the veterans group outlined one possible tactic: to walk in an unbroken line shoulder to shoulder through police to reach the drill pad for the pipeline's crossing under the river, and encircle it.
Some fear more violence as confrontations have escalated, most recently Nov. 20 when police clashed with demonstrators, sending 26 people to the hospital.
"I have always considered the police to be friends, but to be on the front lines that Sunday night was the closest I have ever been to war," said Victory Lonnquist of Seattle, who has been working as a volunteer medic at Standing Rock since summer.
About 300 people were treated for chemical contamination and hypothermia after being tear-gassed, hit with pepper spray and rubber bullets, and sprayed with fire hoses in freezing weather.
Lonnquist said she fears worse to come.
"I am worried someone's going to die," Lonnquist said. "I wouldn't have said that two weeks ago. But being on that bridge and watching them purposely give us hypothermia not once but for six hours, I would grab a patient by the jacket and just crunch through a sheet of ice. ... It scares me, what could come."
Veterans Stand for Standing Rock will take its direction from tribal elders, said Marshal Hunter of Seattle, who coordinated veterans leaving for North Dakota. "We are there to be peaceful, and there to be nonviolent," Hunter said.
Police have said demonstrators have been "aggressive," "militant," broken the law by trespassing, vandalism, arson and thrown rocks, and damaged a bridge when they burned vehicles.
"I think most people would agree with the ideology of trying to protect the water," said Sanders, the sheriff. "But trying to enforce your ideology with committing acts of crime, trespassing, arson, vandalism is not acceptable. There is not an issue with peaceful protest. Because someone doesn't agree with your ideology, it doesn't give you the right to commit crimes."
But Hunter said the show of force against demonstrators is way out of line.
"It's morally wrong and a terrible repetition of things that have happened in the past to Native Americans by people under the color of government," he said.
Veterans participating are instructed to bring no weapons or ammunition and to remain nonviolent no matter what happens.
The Morton County Sheriff's Office won't discuss its tactics or the equipment it intends to deploy if there is a clash. In the past, it has called in reinforcements from Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming in addition to cities and counties throughout North Dakota to defend the pipeline project.
The state borrowed $7 million this past for policing demonstrations against the pipeline, on top of the $10 million it has already spent.
However, the county sheriff is unlikely to use any more officers from outside the state, according to Cecily Fong in the Sheriff's Department, in part because of "political pushback in some of the states that have provided law enforcement," she wrote in an email to The Seattle Times.
