The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is threatening to sue the Trump administration over Trump’s move Tuesday directing the federal government to expeditiously approve the Dakota Access oil pipeline in North Dakota, which the tribe has vehemently opposed.
“President Trump is legally required to honor our treaty rights and provide a fair and reasonable pipeline process,” said Dave Archambault, the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux, which has sought to block the pipeline project because of its proposed path to cross the tribe’s only source of fresh drinking water. The chairman called the action “politically motivated.”
The tribe has appealed to the court several times to stop the pipeline from moving forward. Some courts imposed a temporary halt to the project while they reviewed the tribe’s case that the pipeline should be redirected and the government did not take into account the threat the pipeline poses to drinking water. In nearly every case, the courts rejected their claims and said the project had gone through the normal approval process to be allowed to go ahead.
Trump’s presidential memo argues that the Dakota Access Pipeline is lawful and in the “national interest,” and it directs the Army Corps of Engineers to expedite the final approval process to allow the pipeline to go forward.
“At this time, the [Dakota Access Pipeline] is more than 90 percent complete across its entire route. Only a limited portion remains to be constructed,” Trump’s Tuesday memorandum read. “I believe that construction and operation of lawfully permitted pipeline infrastructure serve the national interest.”
Christopher Guith, vice president for policy at the Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, said the memorandum is not only sending a message to the market and industry, but is also sending a message to the courts.
“It doesn’t decisively change anything but it communicates what the agencies will be doing going forward,” he said. “It also communicates to the market, too, and what I haven’t seen written about at all, is that it also communicates to the court,” Guith said. “This is telling the judge in the case ‘hey, here’s what we plan to do.'”
The company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, is contesting the Obama administration’s move to halt final approval in federal district court in Washington after major protests by the Standing Rock tribe and environmentalists opposed to fossil fuels.
The $3.8 billion project is losing $20 million per day each day it is delayed, attorney David Debold, representing Dakota Access, said in court in December. He asserted that the “final decision on the right-of-way was made on July 25,” and requested that the court expedite final approval of the project in considering the company’s motion.
Guith believes the decision over the pipeline will ultimately be worked out in the courts. Trump’s Cabinet is not in place to push it through, so for now the Trump memorandum sets the tenor for what will occur over the coming months, and his intention to see pipeline projects move forward without delay, according to Guith.
The memorandum posits that Trump has authority under the Constitution to direct the agencies involved in approval of the pipeline to move ahead and finish their work quickly.
The pipeline had been awaiting what the company building the line called a pro-forma approval of an easement for the remaining few hundred feet of the project when the Obama administration decided it was necessary to halt the pipeline to do another environmental assessment.
The memo directs the Secretary of the Army to instruct the head of the Army Corps of Engineers to take all actions to “review and approve in an expedited manner, to the extent permitted by law and as warranted, and with such conditions as are necessary or appropriate, for approvals to construct and operate the DAPL, including easements or rights-of-way to cross federal areas,” according to the memo.
Trump also direct the Army Corps to take steps to review and rescind any action by the Obama administration to halt the pipeline for the purpose of conducting a new environmental review.
