Invoking the historic mistreatment of Native Americans, the Obama administration said Monday it will continue to withhold a final permit for completion of the Dakota Access pipeline while it conducts analysis of concerns that the project will damage sacred tribal sites and water supplies.
Developers of the 1,170-mile pipeline said it would provide a vital and safe means of transporting as much as 500,000 barrels of crude oil daily from the Bakken region of North Dakota to an existing pipeline in Illinois. But the pipeline has stirred national controversy and become a rallying point among Native Americans because it would cross a major waterway just a half-mile north of the Standing Rock Sioux Indian reservation.
That waterway, the Missouri River, was dammed decades ago, flooding the tribe’s historical lands as it formed what is now called Lake Oahe. The tribe has made that history a central theme during months of protests and sometimes violent standoffs with law enforcement. More than 400 demonstrators have been arrested at the construction site near Lake Oahe since this summer. Washington tribes, fighting fossil fuel projects, too, have joined in the struggle, traveling to camps and taking donations.
Before the announcement Monday, protesters marched on the North Dakota Capitol grounds in Bismarck, prompting law enforcement to allow only limited entrance to the Capitol building. More protests were planned for today around the nation.
“The Army has determined that additional discussion and analysis are warranted in light of the history of the Great Sioux Nation’s dispossession of lands, the importance of Lake Oahe to the Tribe, our government-to-government relationship, and the statute governing easements through government property,” the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that reviews projects involving water crossings, said in a statement Monday.
The Corps said it was inviting the tribe “to engage in discussion regarding potential conditions on an easement for the pipeline crossing that would reduce the risk of a spill or rupture, hasten detection and response to any possible spill, or otherwise enhance the protection of Lake Oahe and the Tribe’s water supplies.”
Corps officials said they would also invite discussion of the risk of a spill “in light of such conditions” and whether an easement should be granted at all for the pipeline to cross Lake Oahe at the proposed location.
The announcement comes two months after the Obama administration announced it would withhold the permit, citing concerns by the tribe, and it comes just two weeks after President Barack Obama expressed his reservations.
“My view is that there is a way for us to accommodate sacred lands of Native Americans, and I think that right now the Army Corps is examining whether there are ways to reroute this pipeline,” he said in an interview with NowThis News.
The Standing Rock Sioux have asked the administration to deny the easement permit outright and consider other locations to cross the river.
At one point, the developers of the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, considered crossing the river north of the city of Bismarck, but that crossing met resistance as well. Now the $3.8 billion project is more than 80 percent complete, with the crossing at Lake Oahe the only major obstacle remaining.
The tribe said Monday that although the decision was not a complete victory, “It is clear President Obama is listening” to its concerns.
“We are encouraged and know that the peaceful prayer and demonstration at Standing Rock have powerfully brought to light the unjust narrative suffered by tribal nations and Native Americans across the country,” said Dave Archambault II, the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux.
Jan Hasselman, a lawyer for Earthjustice who has represented the tribe, said he expected the Obama administration to make a final decision on the easement before the president leaves office Jan. 20.
