That’s the longest it would take to detect a leak and shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) should the crude oil within begin escaping into the North Dakota prairie or the Missouri River.
In more than 300 pages, the document details many issues that the government never fully investigated when conducting its environmental review in 2016.
"You have a possibility of a huge leak that goes on over time," said Archambault.
He tells me over the phone that he’s currently gazing out over a frozen Lake Oahe, a reservoir on the Missouri River where the Standing Rock Sioux get their drinking water.
The Standing Rock Sioux and three other tribes continue to fight ETP in court.
Before approving the project, the Army Corps didn’t exactly identify what’s at stake if DAPL ruptures—something the pipeline has already done at least five times since its oil started flowing last June.
DAPL crosses beneath Lake Oahe just north of the Standing Rock Sioux tribal lands.
Last June, after the Standing Rock Sioux and three other tribes took ETP to court, Judge James Boasberg mandated that the Army Corps revise its environmental assessment to "more adequately consider" the effect an oil spill would have on the Standing Rock Sioux’s hunting and fishing rights, as well as issues regarding environmental justice.
The Army Corps will now meet with all four tribes before June 1 and then complete a new environmental review.
Archambault, for one, hopes the tribe’s own report will help push the company to better protect the Standing Rock Sioux’s land and people from disaster, one way or another.