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According to an article at Snopes.com:
The Army Corps of Engineers has denied the easement needed to complete the Dakota Access Pipeline, according Colonel Henderson, who notified Veterans for Standing Rock co-organizer Michael A. Wood Jr on 4 December 2016.
More than 3,000 veterans had converged at the Standing Rock camp to support the Sioux in their ongoing opposition to the building of a $3.7 billion pipeline that would cross through disputed land managed by the Army Corps of Engineers. Wood said upon learning of the move, "This is history."
From a report in Al Jazeera :
The US Army Corps of Engineers has turned down a permit for a controversial pipeline project running through North Dakota, in a victory for Native Americans and climate activists who have protested against the project for several months, according to a statement released.
The 1,885km Dakota Access Pipeline, owned by Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners LP, had been complete except for a segment planned to run under Lake Oahe, a reservoir formed by a dam on the Missouri River.
"The Army will not grant an easement to cross Lake Oahe at the proposed location based on the current record," a statement from the US Army said.
The Standing Rock Sioux tribe, along with climate activists, have been protesting the $3.8bn project, saying it could contaminate the water supply and damage sacred tribal lands.
[...] "Today, the US Army Corps of Engineers announced that it will not be granting the easement to cross Lake Oahe for the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline," said Standing Rock Chairman Dave Archambault II, in a statement.
"Instead, the Corps will be undertaking an environmental impact statement to look at possible alternative routes."
(Score: 0, Troll) by jmorris on Monday December 05 2016, @04:29PM
That is what this story is about. The enviros have run the EPA and the rest of the regulatory machinery for the last eight years. This pipeline was approved. But hippies never admit defeat, and why should they when they know they can go lawless without paying any penalty other than when their idiocy causes an IED to go off early and blows one up. And no I am not comparing them to terrorists. I am calling them terrorists straight up. Because in the end they ain't no more tolerant or even more compatible with America than ISIS is.
So they whipped up an 'encampment' and of course Obama gives them everything they want.... while everyone knows the block will only hold a few weeks. So why do it? So Trump will own it, and the fresh outrage and screams of 'helping the rich destroy precious tribal lands' will be thought to delegitimize Trump. As usual lately the Blue Team totally misunderstands the mood of the country. Cracking hippie heads and BUILDING THE DAMNED THING will confirm in Trump voters that they made the correct choice.
We are tired of absolutely nothing getting done without years and years of fighting hippies, our own goddamned government, the courts and usually cycling around through all of them a few times. Obama pissed away hundreds of billions on what were supposed to be 'shovel ready jobs' only to later admit there are none, that even the Light Bringer can't cut the red tape and actually build anything. It was all mostly diverted to just keeping the big city machine union workers employed doing nothing.
Everything takes so much longer and costs so much more now, almost entirely due to government regulation. Even the government is paralyzed with inaction now. A few blocks away my town has been trying to do an expansion of the courthouse. Just an expansion project, adding on some square footage to the two wings. The whole court operation has been moved out to temporary quarters in a old nearby church that recently moved out for going on two years now and it is clear this job will go far past the two year mark before the safety fences come down around the place and any thought of moving back in can happen. The highway project to four lane the primary artery of traffic north south on this side of the State has taken decades and still isn't quite done. I remember when work started in my home town when I was a small child and I am not one of those anymore. We used to be able to build stuff. Saw a documentary recently and was blown away with a side fact. Disneyland went from closing the deal on the land to opening the gates to visitors in ONE YEAR. Think about that. How far would regaining that kind of can do attitude do toward Making America Great Again?
And this whole issue is a lie anyway. The tribe doesn't get all its water (if any, that isn't entirely clear) from that source, others are available and more could be quickly be made available if needed. The land is NOT tribal lands, there are no artifacts or human remains involved. The tribe in fact wishes the protesters invading the area would simply go away and stop trying to adopt them as a mascot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @04:42PM
> of course Obama gives them everything they want.... while everyone knows the block will only hold a few weeks. So why do it? So Trump will own it,
Grow up.
The Corps initiated the review months ago, back when Obama clearly expected Clinton to win.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/09/493280504/judge-rules-that-construction-can-proceed-on-dakota-access-pipeline [npr.org]
the Justice Department, the Department of the Army and the Interior Department announced that construction in an area of Army Corps' land that is particularly significant to the tribe will not go forward pending further evaluation.
"The Army will not authorize constructing the Dakota Access pipeline on Corps land bordering or under Lake Oahe until it can determine whether it will need to reconsider any of its previous decisions regarding the Lake Oahe site under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) or other federal laws," the statement read.
The agencies asked the pipeline company to "voluntarily pause all construction activity within 20 miles east or west of Lake Oahe."
(Score: 4, Informative) by Zz9zZ on Monday December 05 2016, @05:58PM
Given the human predilection to do things the easy way it seems we have to require certain performance levels. Human bureaucracy is always behind the cutting edge creative builders, so occasionally you will get regulations that are at odds with common sense. The trade off is making sure our world is built well and taken care of in the long term but in return you have to meet a bunch of standards.
We should be talking about how to improve the system, not just make it easier for companies to do whatever they want; which always seems to end up with unintended consequences because safety measures are expensive and thus ignored. Talk about specific problems, but don't whine about the things that protect the people and the planet.
The enviros have run the EPA and the rest of the regulatory machinery for the last eight years. This pipeline was approved. But hippies never admit defeat...
You show your cultural ignorance, along with the level of propaganda that has settled into your brain. Your intentions at least are very clear, profit/oil/money/power/capitalism above ALL else. "It was approved" you say, "they found nothing to worry about" they say, "studies found no significant side effects (*cough* cept little stuff like depression, 10% chance of anal leakage, and 1% increased chance of death)" some scumbag pharma reps said after dumping millions into research and not wanting such a big loss. Yeah, lets use your version of reality, where lies don't matter and neither does integrity.
This issue is larger than the Dakota pipeline, its about setting a new precedent of "people first". The planet is getting too crowded to keep going cowboy on expansion. Take it to space guys, go mine up some asteroids and build us a space station! I hear you can catch sun 24/7, and the "hippies" already built these cool panels that get you free power (well, the Sun pays for it, with its LIFE so be grateful yeh bastards). Imagine the profit margin when energy cost is zero except for base infrastructure to capture it, and with the EM drive you will soon have free fuel for your trip. Ok, the last bit is still a big question mark, but as physicists like to say, "That's just an engineering problem now." Which isn't a dig, its a statement of "it works" and now we need some clever builders to make it work WELL :)
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday December 05 2016, @06:27PM
The trade off is making sure our world is built well and taken care of in the long term but in return you have to meet a bunch of standards.
Ok, Disneyland was built in a year and still operates today, as perfectly safe as any human activity has ever been. So what was so wrong about its construction practices? What has been gained by making the regulatory environment so complex that such a thing simply could not be built today? We announced a plan to land on the Moon in under a decade and did it not so long ago, now we announce twenty year plans that go nowhere, replaced with fresh twenty year roadmaps that everyone understand will also just waste money going nowhere. Again, you seem to see these as improvements, I see it as a major step backwards. Why am I wrong?
You guys are so terrified that any activity MIGHT have a negative side effect that you prefer doing nothing, refusing to realize that too is a choice and has consequences, many of which are bad. Our infrastructure is in a sad state of disrepair because at the current rate it can't be maintained as fast as it wears out, even if money were no object.
Take it to space guys, go mine up some asteroids and build us a space station!
Thou art an innumerate fool. Math, try it sometime. Until we reduce the cost to orbit by a LOT we will never send enough people into space to even make a dent in the population here on Earth or their resource consumption. Especially with your morons regulating the holy hell out of any attempt. Good luck getting a real spaceport permitted these days and can you imagine the environmental impact studies and protests a space elevator project would fire up in the current political environment?
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Monday December 05 2016, @08:53PM
I'm all for investigating regulation which is really just government corruption, but I'm not willing to take the stance of complete de-regulation. Down that road we have already been, and it is ugly.
As for space, that was a projection into the future of where you "builders and doers" can be productive since progress/growth must be made at all times... Stop treating the planet as an expendable source of material, we need to carefully recycle/reuse, energy cost is the biggest barrier there at the moment. As for this pipeline, the protesters simply want less oil. Stop the tar sands, stop the fracking, invest in sustainable energy already! Real investment, not token projects and meager private home subsidies.
As for campaign rhetoric, we would be better off funding renewable energy projects than building a 2k mile wall... Real, tangible energy independence. Oil markets going nuts? That sucks, but renewables would alleviate the impact and put the US in a better position in the future.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Monday December 05 2016, @07:19PM
You're a fucking moron being played by the Elites like a flute. Keep trying to paint us as terrorists because that will foment civil war, and then the good part when that happens, is we get to see you die.
1) It wasn't legitimately approved. Meaning, the regulatory agency bypassed its job to approve it.
2) Obama had nothing to with the encampment, and didn't help nearly as much as you want to alter reality to make it so.
3) WE, as in the protestors, MADE the encampment. With our money and our activism. So I'm one of the terrorists right? :D
4) Fuck you and your assertion that no artifacts or sacred sites exist on THEIR LAND. That's reality distortion you offensive fuckwad.
5) Stop your idiotic bitching about regulatory agencies making everything more expensive. That's the fault of the executives because we are always *forced* to tell them to do the right things. Regulations are just common sense that we shouldn't need to explain to them. In other words, if we don't force them to act human, they will only act like soulless profit machines.
6) If oil and gas pipelines were better managed, like how they are in Canada, then perhaps we wouldn't need to be so concerned? Note, not paranoid, but legitimate concern. Check the facts you stupid, stupid, fuck. Pipelines are not safe in the U.S, and leaks happen quite often. Those safety factors are bullshit once you factor in how much flows through it. An allowance of over 250,000 barrels of oil lost is NOT a safety factor.
7) Many of those you claim to be "straight up terrorists" are VETERANS. ~4,000 military veterans decided to be like ISIS? I'd like to see you say that their faces, boy, would that be a Christmas present. Of course, you're too much of a fucking coward to do that.
7) Die in a fire mother fucker.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday December 05 2016, @08:30PM
Keep trying to paint us as terrorists because that will foment civil war, and then the good part when that happens, is we get to see you die.
Wow. The Blue side is largely hipsters anthilled up in cities that would experience cannibalism inside a week of any sort of disruption that stopped the trucks (and trains) rolling in 24/7 to keep you useless people fed. You reject the idea of private ownership of weapons so even if you could get some you wouldn't know what to do with one. And you think you would win a Civil War? Laughter is the only rational response here. A Smurf Massacre is more like what it would look like.
Pipelines are not safe in the U.S, and leaks happen quite often.
Nothing is safe, your demand for total perfect safety is nothing but an excuse to do nothing; which happens to be your preferred policy position. Greens oppose humanity. I oppose greens because I pick humanity. A pipeline only need be safer than the alternatives to be preferable and they meet that test. Measured by loss to accident per barrel/mile transported nothing else comes close. Not trains, not trucks, not tanker, nothing comes close. Now you either go silent or confess that your actual goal is to leave it in the ground and push alternate energy that costs far, far more in a effort to make us 'greedy' Americans settle for less. Less energy, less food, less lifestyle, eventually less people.
Many of those you claim to be "straight up terrorists" are VETERANS.
So? John "I served in Vietnam" Kerry is still a douche. Signing up for a hitch doesn't automatically convey wisdom, even the service academies can't bat 1000. Especially in the current military more concerned with gender equality than killing people and breaking things. The quality officers have been purged under Obama, leaving mostly politically correct types more suited to NATO meetings. Hopefully "Mad Dog" brings a much needed corrective.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 06 2016, @03:11AM
wow stupid ignorants like you are the reason trump won, go fuck yourself with that mccarthy rethoric
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday December 05 2016, @09:15PM
Environmentalists want all this pipeline and fracking crap denied, but that's not what Obama did. Obama has pursued the "rainbow" energy policy that pisses off environmentalists because it includes fossil fuels, and conservatives still get to whine about green energy because some people remember the 70s when democrats actually were willing to stall the energy economy for environmentalism.
You should really have more sympathy for the "hippies". They are coming around to the distrust of government that rural Republicans have held for decades. The "mood of the country", at least in Iowa where I live, is that this pipeline is a garbage deal. Local farmers that voted Trump have had their lands dug into and polluted in the name of "eminent domain" abused for private corporations. The real tragedy is that the really stupid global warming argument against the pipeline delayed the local right-wing response enough that it passed through before the rural people knew that it wasn't just a liberal thing.
All this garbage is a result of corruption, and the "big government" arguments against liberals are just a scapegoat. Think about it. Building codes are a local issue, and local governments are run by Republicans more often than not. I've been party to these building codes and they are written to protect local permitted contractors from competition. Sometimes these locals don't know WTF they are doing - we had to hire one to run plumbing for a rental property, but the result obviously wasn't to code and had we been allowed to do it ourselves, it would have been.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?