(Mary Steurer – North Dakota Monitor) – A federal judge this week allowed 13 more Republican-led states to intervene as co-defendants in the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s new lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The lawsuit, filed in October, accuses the Army Corps of unlawfully allowing the Dakota Access Pipeline to operate without an easement, a complete environmental assessment or sufficient emergency spill response plans. The tribe ultimately wants a federal judge to shut the pipeline down.
Standing Rock has opposed the pipeline for years, saying it infringes upon the tribe’s sovereignty, has damaged sacred cultural sites and jeopardizes the tribe’s water supply.
The Army Corps of Engineers has jurisdiction over a part of the pipeline that passes below the Missouri River less than a half-mile upstream from the Standing Rock Reservation.
“The Corps has failed to act and failed to protect the tribe,” Standing Rock Chairwoman Janet Alkire said in an October press conference announcing the lawsuit.
The more than 1,000-mile pipeline, often referred to as DAPL, passes through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois. Its pathway includes unceded land recognized as belonging to the Sioux Nation under an 1851 treaty with the U.S. government.
North Dakota joined the case on the side of the Army Corps earlier this month, arguing that closing DAPL would cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue, put thousands of jobs at risk, hamper regional supply chains and harm the environment. State attorneys also argue that a federal court order shuttering DAPL would violate North Dakota’s right to regulate its own land and resources.
In a brief filed Monday, the 13 additional co-defendant states made similar arguments. The group, led by Iowa, said DAPL is integral to the health of regional energy and agriculture markets.
“DAPL plays a vital role in ensuring the nation’s crops can come to market — not because DAPL itself transports agricultural products, but because every barrel of oil that DAPL transports is a barrel that does not take space in a truck or a train,” the states wrote.
This also makes highways and railways safer and reduces pollution, they added.
The 13 states that joined the lawsuit this week are Iowa, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and West Virginia.
According to the states’ brief, the pipeline has paid over $100 million in property taxes to Iowa counties and over $33 million in property taxes to South Dakota counties since it began operating in 2017.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has not yet filed an answer to the tribe’s lawsuit.
Energy Transfer, the developer of the Dakota Access Pipeline, has not requested to intervene in the suit.
The case is before U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, who oversaw the tribe’s 2016 lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers opposing the pipeline.
North Dakota in 2021 sought to join that lawsuit as well, but Boasberg denied the request as the case was in the process of wrapping up.
That case concluded with Boasberg instructing the Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a full environmental impact study of the pipeline, which is still in the works. Boasberg also ordered the pipeline to stop operating pending the completion of the study, though that demand was ultimately overturned by an appellate court.
In a separate federal court case, North Dakota seeks $38 million from the United States government for costs the state says it incurred responding to the Dakota Access Pipeline protests.
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