
The Trump administration cleared the way for the Dakota Access Pipeline to be built after saying that the new environmental reports did not provide any new concerns.
The Hill reports:
The Army Corps of Engineers said it completed the new analysis more than a year after a court ordered the review after American Indian tribes and environmentalists sued to shut the project down.
The agency, which was responsible for approving the pipeline’s crossing of various waterways, quoted on Friday Washington, D.C., federal Judge James Boasberg’s June 2017 ruling that ordered the review.
Army Corps of Engineers said it completed an “analysis of available information and considered materials in the administrative record and has fully considered ‘the impacts of an oil spill on fishing rights, hunting rights, or environmental justice, or the degree to which the pipeline’s effects are likely to be highly controversial.’”
“The Corps’ review on remand did not reveal ‘significant new circumstance[s] or information relevant to environmental concerns,’” the agency said, quoting from the statute for environmental reviews.
Boasberg’s decision last year was a victory for opponents of Dakota Access, a project that the Obama administration had tried to hold up amid high-profile protests, including the creation of a protest camp near North Dakota’s Standing Rock Indian Reservation that was used for months.
Construction on the pipeline has more or less stopped for the time being, but the “analysis” of this environmental report will get construction going.
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