Protests continue to rage in North Dakota over the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline and several Galesburg residents and students are on their way to aid protest efforts.Knox College spokeswoman Megan Scott says about a dozen students from the liberal arts school took off this morning and are expected to be their until Friday.
Mayoral candidate and owner of Q’s Cafe Walt McAllister, his son Stephen and Knox student Sofia Tagkaloglou are going on Friday to deliver supplies currently being collected at the restaurant.
Tagkaloglou says this is a problem for the tribes but the issue effects a much wider population.
She says if the pipeline breaks oil will flow into the Missouri, which flows into the Mississippi which flows into the Gulf of Mexico.
“The tribe’s are really worried about this because this is their only supply of water,” Tagkaloglou says. “The United States government can mobilize and get water imported from somewhere else but for (the tribes) this is the only source of water that they have and they’re not going to give any help.”
Local resident Gay Johnson was there in September for a week and stood on the front lines and saw bulldozers had dug up ancestral Native American sites.
Johnson says it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Galesburg’s water could be effected by a rupture in the pipeline.
The city gets it’s water supply from an aquifer under the Mississippi.
Proponents of the pipeline say it will create a quicker, safer transfer of crude oil while cutting down on truck and rail transportation.