Preparations at the #NoDAPL encampment continue as winter approaches in North Dakota. Photo by International Indigenous Youth Council
Justice, Army and Interior override appeals court decision on Pipeline
Lack of consultation with tribes at core of dispute
By Talli Nauman
Native Sun News Today
Health & Environment Editor
nativesunnews.today WASHINGTON, DC –– In a virtual game of ping-pong between the federal government’s executive and judicial branches over Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s lawsuit to halt construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), the Administration returned the ball on Native American Day Oct. 10. Overriding an appeals court decision that would have allowed building to resume in the 20-mile buffer zone around the Missouri River, the U.S. departments of Justice, the Army and the Interior declared: “The Army will not authorize constructing the Dakota Access Pipeline on Corps land bordering or under Lake Oahe.” Issuing a joint statement, the Cabinet-level offices also said: “We repeat our request that the pipeline company voluntarily pause all construction activity within 20 miles east or west of Lake Oahe.” The communique responded to the District of Columbia U.S. Appeals Court ruling the previous day denying Standing Rock’s petition to extend an injunction on pipeline building while the tribe argues its federal case against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That case alleges lack of consultation with tribal government in the Corps’ decision to issue permits to private companies to build the pipeline across 200 public watersheds including the Oahe Reservoir on the Missouri River. Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners, Phillips 66, Enbridge Corp., Marathon Oil Corp. and other investors want the $3.7-million pipeline construction project to carry highly flammable toxic fracked oil nearly 1,200 miles through Lakota Territory from the Bakken Formation, centered at the Mandan Hidatsa & Arikara Nation, across North and South Dakota, as well as Iowa, to a transfer station in Illinois. The Administration’s most recent declaration and request to delay construction were repeats of the ones the ones it made exactly one month earlier on Sept. 9, when the lower court in the case originally denied the tribe’s injunction request.
Read the rest of the story on the Native Sun News Today website: Justice, Army and Interior override appeals court decision on Pipeline (Contact Talli Nauman at talli.nauman@gmail.com) Copyright permission Native Sun News
Join the Conversation
