Whether the Dakota Access Pipeline continues to operate is now a question for President Joe Biden, as well as District of Columbia federal courts. The D.C. Court of Appeals has ruled that the pipeline is operating illegally without a full environmental impact study. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has asked a D.C. Circuit judge to issue a permanent injunction. And the tribe is also asking the new president to shut the pipeline down.
A D.C. Circuit judge ordered last summer that the Dakota Access Pipeline had to be shut down and drained by August 5th.
DAPL operators and the Army Corps of Engineers immediately appealed and successfully asked for the shutdown to be reversed while the appeals court reviewed the case, heard oral arguments, and deliberated.
The appeals court has now confirmed that the Army Corps illegally permitted the pipeline. That action took place in 2017 under former President Donald Trump, who put a halt to environmental studies ordered by the Obama administration.
Jan Hasselman of Earth Justice represents the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.
“The DC Circuit has put the ball very squarely in the court of the Biden administration to take action on a pipeline that is now operating illegally.”
Hasselman says the tribe has already started the process of getting a court-ordered injunction in the D.C. Circuit. But he says the change in presidential administrations opens another avenue.
“We’re calling on the Biden administration to shut this pipeline down until these legal problems can be resolved.”
Hasselman says the appellate court confirms that the pipeline should not have been built. It never went through the stringent review required by the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. And as a result, it is now operating without a permit.
“Should the pipeline be allowed to operate while the environmental review is going on, and the only answer to that question, the only possible answer, is no, that’s not the way the law works, you’re not supposed to build first and study later.”
Both the D.C. circuit and appellate courts say the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed to consider the hazards of running a pipeline through the waters of the Oahe Reservoir. And they find that the Corps did not consider the concerns of tribes who rely on those waters for drinking, hunting, fishing, industry, agriculture, and medicinal and cultural practices.