<P> Trump is also indirectly linked to the project because Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren contributed $103,000 to the Trump campaign . Trump has said that he supports the completion of the pipeline project . According to his transition team this position "has nothing to do with his personal investments and everything to do with promoting policies that benefit all Americans ." </P> <P> A former staffer of Iowa Governor Terry Branstad re-election campaign, Susan Fenton, who is now the director of government affairs with the Des Moines public relations firm LS2, is handling public relations for Energy Transfer . Texas governor Rick Perry was member of the Energy Transfer Partners and Sunoco Logistics Partners boards of directors but resigned after Trump selected Perry as his nomination for Energy Secretary In December 2016 . Kelcy Warren had contributed $6 million to Perry's 2016 Presidential campaign . </P> <P> Many Sioux tribes have said that the pipeline threatens the Tribe's environmental and economic well - being, and that it has damaged and destroyed sites of great historic, religious, and cultural significance . The tribe has expressed concern over leaks because the pipeline passes under Lake Oahe, which serves as a major source of water . Protests at pipeline construction sites in North Dakota began in the spring of 2016 and drew indigenous people, calling themselves water protectors and land defenders, from throughout North America as well as many other supporters, creating the largest gathering of Native Americans in the past hundred years . </P> <P> In April 2016, a Standing Rock Sioux elder established a camp near the Missouri River at the site of Sacred Stone Camp, located within the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, as a center for cultural preservation and spiritual resistance to the pipeline, and over the summer the camp grew to thousands of people . In July, ReZpect Our Water, a group of Native American youth, ran from Standing Rock in North Dakota to Washington, DC to raise awareness of what they perceive as a threat to their people's drinking water and that of everyone who relies on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers for drinking water and irrigation . </P>

Pipeline route plan first called for crossing north of bismarck