A federal court in Washington has struck down the Dakota Access Pipeline, which the Sioux tribe has been contesting for years.
The future of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline (Dapl) has been thrown seriously into question. A federal court in Washington has revoked its permits and ordered a comprehensive environmental review, which will take months, if not years, to complete, as reported by the British newspaper The Guardian. An unexpected and resounding victory for the Sioux of the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, who have been fighting the project since 2016 and whose opposition drew expressions of support from around the world.
The court ruled that the current project violates the National Environmental Policy Act (Nepa), the United States environmental law. This legislation has, unsurprisingly, already been criticised by US president Donald Trump. According to the judges, the pipeline, as built, has a negative impact on the Standing Rock reservation, located between North and South Dakota, and violates the principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, including the right to health, water and livelihoods. In doing so, the judges effectively recognised the reservation as a sacred place for the cultural and traditional practices of Native Americans.
"After years of commitment to defending our water and our land, we welcome the news of an important legal victory," declared tribal chairman Mike Faith. It was December 2016 when the Obama administration rejected the route of the pipeline, ordering an environmental assessment to analyse alternative routes and evaluate the impact on the tribe's rights. Donald Trump, however, in his first week in office not only decided to reinstate the rejected project but also accelerated its construction. As a result, the nearly two thousand kilometres of pipeline were completed in June 2017.
The Standing Rock Sioux did not give up and filed a lawsuit. But the pipeline continued undisturbed to transport oil from North Dakota to Illinois, without taking into account the concerns of indigenous peoples or the analyses of experts. So the tribes and EarthJustice, a non-profit environmental law group, turned to the courts once again.
With the latest ruling, the court ordered the United States Army Corps of Engineers (Usace), the branch of the US military responsible for the project's design, to carry out a new environmental impact statement, arguing that those previously conducted were "seriously deficient". It also added that Sunoco, the pipeline's parent company, "does not inspire confidence." For this reason, according to experts, a new and more thorough assessment could take years to produce, and, should it prove negative, would lead to the closure of the pipeline. The Usace has not yet responded. "This vindicates what the tribe has always argued about the risk of oil spills," said Jan Hasselman, attorney for EarthJustice. "The Obama administration was right when it moved to deny the permits in 2016."
The setback for the pipeline comes at precisely the moment when the Trump administration is moving to severely curtail the powers of Nepa, which since 1969 has been considered the cornerstone of environmental protection in the United States. Trump's plan is to unblock projects for the extraction of fossil fuels, ignoring the consequences for the environment and, as in this case, people's right to health.
