CANNON BALL, N.D. — Federal officials announced Sunday that they would not approve permits for construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline beneath a dammed section of the Missouri River that tribes say sits near sacred burial sites. ADVERTISING CANNON BALL,
CANNON BALL, N.D. — Federal officials announced Sunday that they would not approve permits for construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline beneath a dammed section of the Missouri River that tribes say sits near sacred burial sites.
The decision is a victory for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of protesters camped near the construction site who have opposed the project because they said it would threaten a water source and cultural sites. Federal officials had given the protesters until Monday to leave a campsite near the construction site.
In a statement Sunday, the Department of the Army’s assistant secretary for Civil Works, Jo-Ellen Darcy, said the decision was based on a need to explore alternate routes for the pipeline crossing.
But it was unclear how durable the government’s decision would be. Sunday’s announcement came in the dwindling days of the Obama administration, which revealed in November that the Army Corps of Engineers was considering an alternative route. The Corps of Engineers is part of the Department of the Army.
President-elect Donald Trump, however, has taken a different view of the project and has said he supported finishing the 1,170-mile pipeline, which crosses four states and is almost complete. Trump owns stock in the company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, but has said that his support has nothing to do with his investment.
There was no immediate response from Energy Transfer Partners, but the chief executive, Kelcy Warren, has said that the company was unwilling to reroute the pipeline, which is intended to transport as many as 550,000 barrels of oil a day from the oil fields of western North Dakota to a terminal in Illinois.
Reaction was swift on both sides, with environmental groups like Greenpeace praising the decision.
But Craig Stevens, a spokesman for the MAIN Coalition, a pro-infrastructure group, condemned the move as “a purely political decision that flies in the face of common sense and the rule of law.”
The announcement set off whoops of joy inside the Oceti Sakowin camp. Tribal members paraded through the camp on horseback, jubilantly beating drums.
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