Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Files New Lawsuit to Shut Down Dakota Access Pipeline
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The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe on Friday filed a new lawsuit to try to shut down the Dakota Access oil pipeline, continuing a decadelong battle over the project.
The tribe filed the case in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and three federal officials of those agencies. The lawsuit seeks to overturn the Army Corps’ May record of decision granting an easement for the pipeline’s river crossing upstream of the tribe’s reservation, among other actions.
“For ten years, Standing Rock’s concerns about this pipeline have not changed, and for ten years we have fought to protect our water, our Treaty rights, and our people,” Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Steve Sitting Bear said in a statement. “The Army Corps has now chosen to move forward without addressing those concerns. Until this pipeline is shut down, we will continue to defend what generations before us protected for our children.”
In 2016 and 2017, thousands of people gathered near the project’s Missouri River crossing to demonstrate against the pipeline, which the tribe views as a threat to its water supply from a potential rupture.
In 2020, a federal judge ordered a more rigorous environmental review of the pipeline’s river crossing. In May, the Army Corps issued........
