So… His Lowness, Keeper of the Doritos, Trumplethinskin signed an executive order green-lighting DAPL and Keystone XL.
As he signed the paperwork in an Oval Office photo op, Trump said his administration is “going to renegotiate some of the terms” of the Keystone project, which would carry crude oil from the tar sands of western Canada and connect to an existing pipeline to the Gulf Coast.
The pipelines had been stopped during the Obama administration. The State Department rejected a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, and President Obama ordered work halted on the Dakota pipeline after Native American groups and other activists protested its route near culturally sensitive sites in North Dakota.
DAPL, if you will recall, was halted because they were going to build it through Native American land, violating treaty rights:
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which protested the Dakota Access pipeline, said it will take legal action to fight Trump’s decision, saying the pipeline “risks contaminating tribal and American water supplies while disregarding treaty rights.”
President Obama said in an interview published this week that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was considering rerouting the Dakota Access Pipeline to accommodate the “sacred lands of Native Americans,” sparking speculation over the fate of the controversial crude oil pipeline.
But it also prompted some to point out that the current path of the pipeline is actually a reroute itself, with critics calling this reroute an act of “environmental racism.”
A previously proposed route for the 1,172-mile pipeline had it crossing the Missouri River north of Bismarck, North Dakota, according to a document filed as part of the permitting process. The eventual route that was decided on, and is currently in construction, moved the water crossing of the crude oil pipeline south of the North Dakota capital, to just upstream of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s reservation.
And here is a PDF of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s call to action.
So now these environmental travesties are going to be built, violating land treaties with Native Americans and likely making Climate Change worse…
But it’s the Nazi getting punched in the face that’s the big problem, here…
Does anybody remember when Republicans were getting all bent out of shape about Obama’s use of executive orders, declaring such behaviour to be unconstitutional tyranny?