Dakota Access Pipeline ruling favoring Standing Rock Sioux a victory, but the battle is not over.
What happened at Standing Rock is a movement, and you don’t see the benefits of a movement until way later.” ~David Archambault II, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux, addressing court ruling ++ ++ ++ The 91-page decision issued Wednesday by a federal court ruling against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for violating the law with an inadequate environmental review of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline garnered some long-delayed activist hurrahs this week.
Most of that run is built on private land.
While this is clearly a major win for the tribe, the details show the decision to be a mixed victory.
For one thing, despite saying the Corps failed to follow the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in granting an easement under Lake Oahe, he did not tell Energy Transfer Partners, the builder, to shut off the oil that has been flowing through the pipeline for more than two weeks.
The judge also ruled against the tribe on other issues.
Boasberg did not say one way or another whether the Corps’ had made the wrong decision in granting the easement, only that it had failed to cover ground NEPA requires to be reviewed before making a decision.
We hope this decision leads to the stoppage of oil flowing in the Bakken crude oil pipeline as a permanent remedy to protecting the drinking water of the Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux Nations.
We will continue to support any and all efforts to divest from fossil fuels and stop the Dakota Access Pipeline once and for all.” Although the pipeline does not cross reservation land, it has been installed on ancestral Sioux territory.
He doesn’t see the cost in the future, he just sees the dollars gained today.” That, sadly, is not something only Donald Trump does.