BATH

Shelley Little has gathered more than 600 signatures from Bath residents asking the Bath City Council to write a letter expressing their support for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in its opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

“If there’d been more than just me collecting signatures, I know we could have gotten more,” said Little.

Once built, the Dakota Access Pipeline would transport oil from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota across state lines to Illinois. While the site doesn’t touch the reservation itself, opponents of the pipeline claim that it would destroy Sioux burial grounds and sacred sites and is a threat to the tribe’s water source.

“What’s been done to the native people forever in this country is just wrong,” said Little. “I’m pretty sure that if they took bulldozers into the Arlington National Cemetery, that people would be really concerned.”

Thousands of protesters traveled across the country in the summer and late into fall to join with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in protesting the pipeline. Those unable to travel have held protests across the country showing solidarity with the Standing Rock activists. In September, Little helped organize one such protest in Bath, and said that she had more than a hundred people in attendance.

“I wanted to educate people about what was going on in Standing Rock and also to make them aware kind of as an aside, that if that pipeline did indeed go under the Missouri River it was going to impact something like millions of people and their drinking water and the agricultural area,” said Little.

Tension in North Dakota has abated in the last two weeks following the announcement that construction would be put to a halt while the Army Corps of Engineers looked for an alternative path for the pipeline. Dave Archambault, II, Chairman of Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, told protesters who were not part of the tribe to return home until further developments.

“I think it’s still very important that the city council convey our support — it’s certainly not done,” said Little.

Little presented 654 signatures to the city council at their meeting last week. While the council opted not to discuss the issue immediately, Councilwoman Susan Bauer volunteered to put it on the agenda for the council’s next meeting, in January. Bauer told The Times Record that she had already reached out to Mary Eosco, Chair of the City Council, about getting the issue on the agenda.

nstrout@timesrecord.com