A federal judge decided Wednesday that crude oil can flow through the contested Dakota Access oil pipeline in North Dakota while the Army Corps of Engineers conducts a new environmental review over a portion of the pipeline that runs below Lake Oahe.
The decision is a victory for the Trump administration, which expedited the pipeline’s approval process through a presidential executive order soon after President Trump was inaugurated.
District Court Judge James Boasberg agreed with Native American groups in June that a new environmental review was necessary for the portion of the pipeline that goes under Lake Oahe, which the Standing Rock Sioux and others have argued threatens their water supply.
In issuing the June order, Boasberg said he would consider stopping the shipment of oil while the Army conducted its review, which would take months. On Wednesday, he decided to allow the oil pipeline to continue shipping oil along its 1,200-mile path from North Dakota to Illinois. The pipeline has been operating since the beginning of June.
“The dispute over the Dakota Access Pipeline has now taken nearly as many twists and turns as the 1,200-mile pipeline itself,” Boasberg wrote in Wednesday’s decision.
He said there is a “significant possibility” of the Army “justifying its prior determinations,” so the pipeline can keep operating during the review.
Nevertheless, Boasberg said the environmental review “cannot be reduced to a bureaucratic formality” and he will examine whether regulators “fulfilled their statutory obligations” if, and when, legal challenges are filed after the review is completed.
