Excellent news from Standing Rock!


And boy-howdy, could we all use some good news these days of nearly total Sturm and Drang

Via commondreams.org, March 25, 2020: ‘Huge Victory’ for Standing Rock Sioux Tribe as Federal Court Rules DAPL Permits Violated Law’ (Creative Commons)

“A federal judge handed down a major victory for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe of North Dakota on Wednesday, ruling that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers violated the National Environmental Policy Act by approving federal permits for the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The USACE must complete a full environmental impact study of the pipeline, including full consideration of concerns presented by the Standing Rock Tribe, the judge ruled. The tribe has asked the court to ultimately shut the pipeline down.

BREAKING: The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe scored a major victory in the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline today when a court found the Trump administration violated the law when it issued permits for the project. #NoDAPL https://t.co/JStMsEilbN

— Earthjustice (@Earthjustice) March 25, 2020

The court chastised the USACE for moving ahead with affirming the permits in 2016 and allowing the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) crossing the Missouri River after President Donald Trump assumed office in 2017, without considering the expert analysis put forward by the tribe.

The Standing Rock Sioux had raised concerns regarding the likelihood and danger of potential oil spills, DAPL’s leak-detection system, and the safety record of Sunoco Logistics, the company behind the pipeline. Sunoco “has experienced 276 incidents resulting in over $53 million in property damage from 2006 to 2016” and has “one of the lowest performing safety records of any operator in the industry,” the tribe’s experts found.

The federal ruling “validates everything the Tribe has been saying all along about the risk of oil spills to the people of Standing Rock,” said Earthjustice attorney Jan Hasselman in a statement. “The Obama administration had it right when it moved to deny the permits in 2016, and this is the second time the court has ruled that the government ran afoul of environmental laws when it permitted this pipeline. We will continue to see this through until DAPL has finally been shut down.”

DAPL and the fight against the pipeline was the subject of international attention in 2016 when thousands of water defenders gathered at camps in North Dakota, facing a highly militarized police force [Tiger Swan mercenaries] armed with tanks, riot gear, rubber bullets, and other weapons.

Since Trump reversed former President Barack Obama’s December 2016 order denying the permits and allowed the construction to be completed in June 2017, the tribe has challenged the permits and demanded the USACE conduct a full environmental analysis.

“After years of commitment to defending our water and earth, we welcome this news of a significant legal win,” said Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairman Mike Faith. “It’s humbling to see how actions we took four years ago to defend our ancestral homeland continue to inspire national conversations about how our choices ultimately affect this planet. Perhaps in the wake of this court ruling the federal government will begin to catch on, too, starting by actually listening to us when we voice our concerns.”

Further information from: ‘Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Prevails as Federal Judge Strikes Down DAPL Permits; Victory: Decision cites risks of pipeline spills to Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, March 25, 2020, earthjustice.org

“The Court’s decision relies heavily on the technical analyses conducted by the Tribe’s agency directors and expert consultants, repeatedly citing the Tribe’s evidence that the risk of a spill, and the consequences should one occur, are far more serious than ever recognized. The Court ruling validates the Tribe’s hard work over several years to provide technical input into the remand process.

View the entire document with DocumentCloud (42 pages)

For example, the Court criticized the Corps for failing to address the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s expert criticism of its analysis, citing issues like potential worst case discharge, the difficulty of detecting slow leaks, and responding to spills in winter.

The Court asked the parties to submit additional briefing on the question of whether to shut down the pipeline in the interim.”

Militarized Police Evict Water Protectors from Oceti Sakowin (Sacred Stone Camp) Feb. 23 2017, Unicorn Riot (Very hard to witness even a second time)

Ladonna Bravebull Alllard: Stand Like Siting Bull

Wikipeida’s page of the history of the #NoDAPL protests.

Share
up
17 users have voted.

Comments

Granma's picture

up
7 users have voted.
wendy davis's picture

@Granma

ad given the points of the judge's ruling, it seems likely that he'll shut down construction for now, and perhaps permanently. or so it seems.

up
2 users have voted.

About time some court figured this out.

Future re-organization of the (once) united states...

usa_lakeland_042.jpg

The fed is failing. Regional rule makes more sense.

up
4 users have voted.

@QMS has never been to northern Idaho. White supremacist Confedrate state wannabe should be colored Deep South red.

They'd align with the much more racist Montanan area than Wash. or Ore.

up
4 users have voted.

@Battle of Blair Mountain

came from https://peakfuture.wordpress.com/maps-of-future-america/retrotopia/

geopolitical aggregations

which lead to this...

http://aoda.org

sorry wendy, didn't hold the curve very tight

up
2 users have voted.
wendy davis's picture

@QMS

even with the archruid michael greer's 'retrotopia' map. again, my apologies. bu my stars, does he have a major fan base commentariat! most of his posts are over my head, i'll readily admit.

up
1 user has voted.

@QMS
(though I read an article in The Atlantic many years ago discussing the idea that regionalism was the Way of the Future), but I do know this: Anybody who posits a future in which Wisconsin throws in its lot with the Fibs, rather than the northern plains, doesn't know fuck all about Wisconsin, and is very much indeed writing big-F Fantasy.

up
2 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

boriscleto's picture

@QMS Should be the Otto-man Empire (An old joke from a Syracuse blog)

Go Orange

up
1 user has voted.

" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

@boriscleto

the orange consortium
cooking up devious devices

up
1 user has voted.
wendy davis's picture

@QMS

thickwit onc again, but i'd about to say 'nice catch': tiger swan miitary mercnaries as modern day pinkerton strike-breakers, my sole reference having been the radical ILWU in wshington...whose members had refused to unload a shipment of GMO wheat at the docks, and barack obama has sent in the coast guard to ensure it WAS unloaded by scabs. meanwhile, comprador afl-cio richard trumka called it 'a regional dispute.

i'd ended up calling the ILWU to find out what the fuck was up, and had gotten a few quotes, dunno if this 2013 diary or not but:

During ILWU’s contract negotiations and walkout, EGT brought in other union workers under the umbrella of the AFL-CIO at lower wages, essentially pitting union workers against other union workers. Big Boss Richard Trumka called it a ‘jurisdictional issue’, and refused to halt the practice. The strike at Longview got so contentious that Barack Obama ordered the Coast Guard to patrol the shores in order to ‘protect’ EGT grain ships. EGT had hired modern day Pinkerton strike-busting thugs from Special Response Corporation which claimed expertise in “Counter-terrorism and threat mitigation systems” to help er…keep the peace and spread the anti-capitalist love…

At the time, Robert McEllrath, president of the ILWU International had been painted into quite a corner, and had to parse his words very carefully over the Port Shutdowns aided by OWS in order to stay in compliance with Taft-Hartley and protect union members from firing and financial reprisals. (Read more at the same link.) But on August 29, with West Coast contract negotiations just ahead for the ILWU, Robert McEllrath sent the following message to Trumka (excerpts, my bolds):

guess they added a More beaks, but the ILWU quite the afl-cio over it.

anyhoo, your map is thus confusing to me. might you explain? others seem to know to what you're referring.

up
2 users have voted.

@wendy davis @wendy davis

has been floating about for years, in future fiction and sociology texts.
The idea is having geographic areas band together both economically
and politically. Negotiate from a larger base than individual states.

The divisional lines are abstract. Obviously, most of WI is more closely linked to
MN and northern IO. The NV and AZ 'abandoned' is funny.
Like the maps of the mid-east showing 'contested lands' around Israel.

When the fed loses it's grip, we will have the opportunity to re-align.
Areas sharing close proximity, climate conditions, agricultural interests and
the like have a common interest.

Not sure I'll live to see it happen, but would like to.

up
0 users have voted.
wendy davis's picture

@QMS

of a balkanized US into 'affinity regions' has been posited for ages with various maps. i just have no idea what it has to do with this good news from standing rock is all.

up
2 users have voted.

@wendy davis when I see news about a region (like the dakotas), I think of the landscape and people. Have been supporting the legal fights with the water protectors for years. So am glad some court ruled against the tyranny in their favor. Some investments pay off.

Sorry for skidding of the road.

up
1 user has voted.
The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@QMS Certainly nobody who's ever lived in New Mexico!

Jesus H, nononononono - NM binds with Colorado, and Texas is given back to OLD Mexico (whether either of them like it or not!).

Poor New Orleans should be its own sovereign international city.

up
2 users have voted.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

wendy davis's picture

i'll bring buffy saint marie's 'priests of the golden bull' to close.

Buffy’s speaking of: The stolen sacred black hills (Paha Sapa, “the heart of everything that is’) was stolen from the lakota in 1877 after gold and uranium had been discovered. the supreme court in 1980 had ruled that that the Black Hills had been illegally taken, and that the Oceti Sakowin were owed the sum of $105 million for the Black Hills plus an additional $44 million for the lands outside of the Black Hills.

The money (allegedly) is still held in trust, and some believe that future generations may accept the billions in payment. The ‘good guys’ she references is senator bill bradley, although i’ve long forgotten his part in the play.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX_AhL2SsUs]

up
2 users have voted.