A ruptured pipeline has spilled more than 176,000 gallons of crude oil into a hillside and a Little Missouri River tributary about 150 miles west of Cannon Ball, N.D., where thousands of activists have spent months fighting construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, state officials said Monday. A segment of the Belle Fourche Pipeline near Belfield, N.D., began leaking earlier this month, contaminating nearly 6 miles of the Ash Coulee Creek before cleanup workers contained it, Bill Suess, an environmental scientist from the North Dakota Department of Health, told the Associated Press . An estimated 130,200 gallons of oil spilled into the creek, and another 46,200 gallons leaked onto a hillside, Suess told Forum News Service in a separate interview. The spill dirtied private and federal land along the waterway, but no drinking water sources were affected, Seuss said. About 37,000 gallons of oil have been recovered so […]