Link at Bismarck Tribune.
More time is needed to
finish additional court-ordered environmental study of the Dakota Access
oil pipeline due to difficulties in getting needed information from
American Indian tribes fighting the project in court.
The
delay won't impact the $3.8 billion pipeline, which has been operating
since last June, moving North Dakota oil through South Dakota and Iowa
to a shipping point in Illinois. But it will delay resolution of a
federal lawsuit that has lingered for nearly two years.
U.S.
District Judge James Boasberg last summer ordered the Army Corps of
Engineers to further review the pipeline's impact on tribal interests,
including how a spill under the Lake Oahe reservoir on the Missouri
River in the Dakotas would impact the water supply of the Standing Rock
and Cheyenne River Sioux. Those tribes are leading the lawsuit that was
filed in July 2016.
The Corps last October told Boasberg it would finish the mandated work
by April 2, but the agency late last week informed him that won't happen
"as a result of difficulties in obtaining requested information from
the plaintiff tribes in a timely manner." Justice Department Attorney
Reuben Schifman did not provide a new date, saying it depended on
cooperation from the tribes.
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