Our fight against the Dakota Access pipeline is far from over

[G_j]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/15/dakota-access-pipeline-standing-rock?CMP=share_btn_fb


Several 2020 candidates have pledged to overturn the DAPL permits as the battle continues in the courts

Fri 15 Nov 2019 10.34 EST

In 2016, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s peaceful and principled opposition to a new crude oil pipeline crossing our ancestral homelands and our water source captured the world’s attention. Although the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) has been operating for more than two years, the Tribe’s defense of water and earth hasn’t faded from memory and continues to shape national conversations about how our choices affect this planet, our home.

Several presidential hopefuls, including senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, recently pledged to revoke the DAPL permits if elected. That is the right thing to do; we ask all candidates to join this pledge. Those permits – which unfairly burden the Tribe with the risk of accidental oil spills into our water source and on to lands sacred to us – should never have been issued.

In late 2016, the previous administration correctly and justifiably denied a key permit DAPL operators needed to cross the Missouri River, just upstream of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Indian reservation. In early 2017, the current administration reversed course just after taking office and issued the key permit that cleared the way for the pipeline’s completion. Although a federal judge agreed with our Tribe’s position that the pipeline’s environmental review was unlawful, the construction went forward and oil has been flowing through the pipeline since the summer of 2017.

But the story does not end there. The Tribe is still engaged in a court battle challenging pipeline permits. Early next year, the court will rule on our renewed legal challenge. We have asked, for a second time, that permits be thrown out and the pipeline shut down, because permitting was unlawful. Our motion asking the court to stop pipeline operations followed an insincere process by the US army corps of engineers, the regulatory agency in charge of the project. A federal judge ordered the corps to redo an environmental review because the corps’ permits fell short of legal standards. Instead of taking our concerns seriously, the corps ignored the evidence we offered showing that the risk and impact of an oil spill is worse than has ever been acknowledged. The corps refused to share key technical documents with us or to engage with our technical experts. The corps then issued a report affirming its earlier findings that the pipeline did not present a risk to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

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