Environmental groups sue Trump administration for Keystone XL pipeline OK
Six environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, challenging its approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Bloomberg photo by Daniel Acker.
Keystone XL would transport Alberta oilsands crude to US
On Thursday, Reuters reported six environmental groups have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, challenging its decision to approve TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline.
At a federal court in Montana on Thursday, the groups claimed that the State Department, which granted to pipeline permission to cross the Canada-US border relied on an “outdated and incomplete environmental impact statement” in granting its decision earlier in March.
According to the groups’ legal filing, by approving the pipeline without public input and an up-to-date environmental assessment, the Trump administration violated the National Environmental Policy Act.
“They have relied on an arbitrary, stale, and incomplete environmental review completed over three years ago, for a process that ended with the State Department’s denial of a cross-border permit,” the court filing says.
Last week at the White House, President Donald Trump announced the presidential permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline.
After filing the lawsuit, Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club said “This tar sands pipeline poses a direct threat to our climate, our clean water, wildlife, and thousands of landowners and communities along the route of this dirty and dangerous project, and it must and will be stopped.”
Trump said the project would lower consumer fuel prices, create jobs and decrease US dependence on foreign oil.
In late 2015, former President Barack Obama rejected the pipeline project, saying it would lead to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions and would not create many permanent jobs for Americans.
This is the second lawsuit filed this week that challenges the Trump administration’s recent moves to undo Obama’s climate change regulations.
On Wednesday, conservation groups and the Northern Cheyenne Native American tribe of Montana sued the Trump administration for violating the National Environmental Policy Act after the Republican government lifted the moratorium on the sale of coal leases on federal land.
Both lawsuits were filed in US District Court in Montana’s Great Falls Division.
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