Dakota Access Pipeline protests running through KC on Tuesday

The Dakota Access Pipeline, or DAPL, marks the latest choke point pitting environmentalists against the energy industry — and an issue that has spurred high-profile protests from tribal members.

The fight over whether to build a pipeline that can carry nearly 600,000 barrels of crude oil from the Dakotas to Illinois comes super-charged because native American groups have portrayed the project as a threat to their water supply, to sacred sites and to their cultural sovereignty.

On Tuesday, the protests are expected to arise in downtown Kansas City.

The fight in the Dakotas follows the long-brewing debate over the Keystone XL pipeline. TransCanada wants to tap tar sands in Canada and move that crude to the Gulf Coast for refining. Retrieving oil from those northern reserves typically requires more energy than from other sources of oil. Environmentalists have portrayed that as a prime example of energy policy that continues the world’s reliance on fossil fuels and the creation of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.

But the efforts to fight the Keystone XL pipeline were more bureaucratic than the Dakota Access Pipeline. Because the Keystone pipeline would cross an international border, environmentalists have moved to block it by appealing to the U.S. State Department to ban regulatory approval.

The $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline, in contrast, would cross only state borders. That’s prompted protesters to gather by the thousands at various spots in the Dakotas. Sioux and other tribes see it as a local threat, while non-tribal environmentalists also view the DAPL as a broader danger both to the areas it would pass through and the climate more globally.

Those anti-pipeline activists have also rallied on social media — particularly Facebook and Twitter.

Houston-based Energy Transfer Partners, or ETP, wants to building an underground pipeline that would run from the geological area known as the Bakken Formation to Pakota, Ill.

Advances in horizontal drilling techniques made oil extraction in the Bakken more practical and, for a time, created a booming economy in the Dakotas. Burying an 1,134-mile pipeline from the Dakotas through Iowa to Illinois would make drilling in the regional more profitable and could boost U.S. energy self-reliance.

But oil contamination of underground water supplies can be devastating. A pipeline carries at least some risk on that front. Environmentalists see the danger as profound. Industry says evolving technology and long-standing regulations will protect against it.

The Dakota Access Pipeline would run near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, a sprawling area of poverty that stretches across parts of North and South Dakota. Protesters say the pipeline poses peril for their water supply and its construction could disturb sacred tribal lands.

Members of the tribe have played the most visible part in months of demonstrations. On Monday, those protests forced the closing of the state Capitol in Bismark, N.D. The state has borrowed $4 million to deal with the long-running demonstrations.

Over the course of protests, nearly 500 people have been arrested. A United Nations group representing indigenous people has said the federal government appeared to ignore treaties and the and human rights of American Indians in the conflict.

Supporters of the pipeline say the project has been approved and have called on the Obama administration to lift a hold and issue an easement allowing construction to move forward. The U.S. Corps of Engineers has finished a review of the pipeline but has said it wants more study and tribal input before letting the pipeline cross the Missouri River in North Dakota.

On Nov. 9, the Kansas City Council’s Public Safety and Neighborhood committee approved a resolution against the pipeline. The entire council approved the resolution a day later.

On Tuesday, rallies were planned across the country opposing the pipeline, including one at 4:30 p.m. across from the Bolling Federal Building, 601 E. 12th St.

This story was originally published November 15, 2016 at 11:02 AM with the headline "Dakota Access Pipeline protests running through KC on Tuesday."