South Dakota is poised to approve laws aimed at potential protests against the planned Keystone XL oil pipeline, seeking to prevent disruptive demonstrations like those against the Dakota Access pipeline that cost neighboring North Dakota nearly $40 million and led to hundreds of arrests beginning in late 2016.
South Dakota’s Republican-dominated Legislature rushed two bills to approval in three days, but it wasn’t immediately clear when Gov. Kristi Noem will sign them.
The Republican governor’s bills would require pipeline companies to help pay extraordinary expenses such as the cost of policing during protests and aim to pursue money from demonstrators who engage in so-called “riot boosting,” which is defined in part as encouraging violence during a riot.
But the measures have sparked opposition from Native Americans tribes who say they weren’t consulted . The legislation comes after opponents of the Dakota Access oil pipeline staged large protests that resulted in 761 arrests in North Dakota over a six-month span beginning in late 2016. The state spent $38 million policing the protests.
Read the full story on the Washington Post.