iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump used his second weekday in office to sign memoranda aimed at advancing the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, which pleased supporters of the projects and brought immediate condemnation from environmentalists and other opponents.
Trump said as he signed one of the memoranda, “This is with regard to the construction of the Keystone pipeline, something’s that’s been in dispute … We’ll see if we can get that pipeline built. A lot of jobs, 28,000 jobs. Great construction jobs.”
He also signed a memorandum on the Dakota Access Pipeline, and announced that construction of both pipelines would be “subject to terms and conditions to be negotiated by us.”
The response, pro and con, was swift.
“Today’s news is a breath of fresh air, and proof that President Trump won’t let radical special-interest groups stand in the way of doing what’s best for American workers,” said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate.
Trip Van Noppen, president of Earthjustice, a national environmental organization, said: “Four days after taking the oath of office, and three days after millions across the country and world marched in protest of his administration,” Trump appears to be ignoring public sentiment on the pipelines. “He should brace himself to contend with the laws he is flouting and the millions of Americans who are opposed to these dangerous and destructive projects.”
The Keystone XL project was killed when President Obama rejected it in November 2015 and decided not to approve a presidential permit that was necessary because the project would cross the U.S. border from Canada.
The 1,179-mile pipeline, which would stretch from Canada through Nebraska to the Gulf Coast, was supported by Republicans and some Democrats who said the project wouldn’t harm the environment and would create thousands of construction jobs as well as decrease America’s dependence on oil imports from the Middle East. But opponents argued it would contribute to climate change by producing more gases through the extraction of oil sands.
Obama cited concerns over climate change in his decision and said Keystone XL’s delivery system of crude oil from Canada “would not serve the national interests of the United States.”
The other pipeline that Trump addressed on Tuesday, the Dakota Access Pipeline, was stopped in December 2016 when the Army Corps of Engineers denied a crucial easement needed for the project to cross under Lake Oahe, a large reservoir on the Missouri River in North Dakota just upstream of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe reservation.
Construction of the pipeline prompted big, prolonged protests with thousands of Native Americans, environmental activists and allies camping out for months near Standing Rock reservation. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in July sued to block the four-state crude oil project, claiming that the tribe was never meaningfully consulted before construction began. They also cite an 1851 treaty that they say specifies that the land in question was designated for Native American tribes.
In response to Trump’s executive memorandum Tuesday, the tribe said in a statement that the “administration’s politically motivated decision violates the law and the tribe will take legal action to fight it.”
“President Trump is legally required to honor our treaty rights and provide a fair and reasonable pipeline process,” said Dave Archambault II, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. “Americans know this pipeline was unfairly rerouted towards our nation and without our consent. The existing pipeline route risks infringing on our treaty rights, contaminating our water and the water of 17 million Americans downstream.”
Earthjustice, which has been representing the tribe in its court battle against the Dakota Access project, said the president’s “move is legally questionable, at best.”
After signing the memoranda Tuesday, Trump said he wants to make it a requirement that when new pipelines are constructed in the U.S., the pipes themselves are also built in the country.
“If we are going to build pipelines in the United States, the pipes should be built in the United States,” the president said. “We build the pipelines, we want to build the pipe, going to put a lot of workers, lot of steel workers back to work.”
Trump also signed actions to expedite environmental reviews and approvals for high-priority infrastructure projects and to streamline what he called “incredibly cumbersome” regulations for domestic manufacturing.
“We intend to fix our country, our bridges, our roadways. We can’t be in an environmental process for 15 years if a bridge is going to be falling down or if a highway is crumbling. So we’re expediting environmental reviews and approvals,” Trump said.
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