Monday, February 13, 2017

Judge denies request to halt Dakota Access pipeline work

A federal judge on Monday rejected a request by two American Indian tribes for an emergency order halting construction of the remaining section of the Dakota Access oil pipeline. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, in Washington, D.C., said that as long as the oil isn’t flowing through the pipeline, there is no immediate harm to the Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux tribes, which are suing to stop the project. But he said he’d consider the arguments more thoroughly at another hearing on Feb. 27. The tribes requested the temporary injunction last week after Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners got federal permission to lay pipe under a Missouri River reservoir in North Dakota. That’s the last big section of the $3.8 billion pipeline that would need to be constructed before it could carry oil from North Dakota to Illinois. The tribes say the pipeline would endanger their cultural sites and water supply. They added a religious freedom component to their case last week by arguing that clean water is necessary to practice the Sioux religion and that the mere presence of the pipeline renders the water impure. At the hearing, though, Boasberg said the harm to the tribe apparently would come from the pipeline being turned on and the oil flowing through it, not from the pipeline’s mere presence...more

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