Dakota Access protesters claim responsibility for pipeline sabotage by William Petroski.
From the post:
Two Iowa activists with a history of arrests for political dissent are claiming responsibility for repeatedly damaging the Dakota Access Pipeline while the four-state, $3.8 billion project was under construction in Iowa.
Jessica Reznicek, 35, and Ruby Montoya, 27, both of Des Moines, held a news conference Monday outside the Iowa Utilities Board’s offices where they provided a detailed description of their deliberate efforts to stop the pipeline’s completion. They were taken into custody by state troopers immediately afterward when they abruptly began using a crowbar and a hammer to damage a sign on state property.
Both women are involved in Iowa’s Catholic Worker social justice movement and they described their pipeline sabotage as a “direct action” campaign that began on Election Day 2016. They said their first incident of destruction involved burning at least five pieces of heavy equipment on the pipeline route in northwest Iowa’s Buena Vista County.
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The two women said they researched how to pierce the steel pipe used for the pipeline and in March they began using oxyacetylene cutting torches to damage exposed, empty pipeline valves. They said they started deliberately vandalizing the pipeline in southeast Iowa’s Mahaska County, delaying completion for weeks.

Jessica Reznicek (Photo: Special to the Register)
Reznicek and Montoya said they subsequently used torches to cause damage up and down the pipeline throughout Iowa and into part of South Dakota, moving from valve to valve until running out of supplies. They said their actions were rarely reported in the media. They also contended the federal government and Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline developer, withheld vital information from the public.
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Two people out of a U.S. population of 326,474,013 delayed the Dakota Access Pipeline for weeks.
BTW, a representative of the “we collect money and talk about the environment,” the Sierra Club, quite naturally denounces effective action against the pipeline.
After all, if anyone actually stopped damage to the environment in any one case, donors would expect effective action in other cases. Leaving the Sierra Club high and dry.
As a reading test, you pick the heroes in Petroski’s report.