SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
A sign against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline is posted to a tree in Polk, Nebraska. (Photo: Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
Denouncing Trump's Environmental Impact Review as 'Illegal,' Green Groups Vow to Defeat Keystone XL Once More
"Once again, the Trump administration is attempting to take a shortcut around the legally required review process on Keystone XL, putting our communities at risk for the sake of propping up the Canadian tar sands industry."
Jul 31, 2018
Green groups denounced an environmental review released Monday by President Donald Trump's State Department--which claims that building, operating, and maintaining the Nebraska portion of TransCanada's Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would have a "negligible" to "moderate" environmental impact--and vowed to keep fighting the project.
"Once again, the Trump administration is attempting to take a shortcut around the legally required review process on Keystone XL, putting our communities at risk for the sake of propping up the Canadian tar sands industry," declared Sierra Club Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign director Kelly Martin.
In March of 2017, the Trump administration reversed former President Barack Obama's decision to block the pipeline and issued a presidential permit. This new draft assessment (pdf) pertains to the Mainline Alternative Route (MAR), which Nebraska regulators approved in November, even though the path was not evaluated as part of the federal government's 2014 environmental impact statement.
"Landowners, Tribal Nations, and everyday citizens will continue to fight the Trump administration's illegal rubber-stamp of a permit for Keystone XL, and this illegal review."
--Jane Kleeb, Bold Nebraska
The Northern Plains Resource Council, Bold Alliance, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Sierra Club are suing the administration for approving the pipeline using an outdated review and rejected this attempt to, as NRDC senior attorney Jackie Prange put it, "patch over its total failure to comply with the law by releasing this environmental assessment now."
The administration's new draft assessment claims that the MAR portion of the pipeline would have:
- a negligible impact on land use, recreation, and visual resources;
- a negligible to minor impact on socioeconomics and environmental justice;
- a minor impact on geology and soils, air quality and greenhouse gases, and cultural resources; and
- a minor to moderate impact on noise and vibration, water resources, and biological resources.
Environmentalists, meanwhile, condemned the administration for "failing to conduct an adequate review of the project's climate impacts, harm to endangered species, or changes in oil prices and market forces since 2014" by producing this "abbreviated" assessment rather than a supplemental environmental impact statement.
Calling Keystone XL "a threat to our land, water, wildlife, communities, and climate," Martin concluded that the pipeline "was a bad idea when it was proposed a decade ago, it was a bad idea when former President Obama rejected it, and it's an even worse idea now."
"Landowners, Tribal Nations, and everyday citizens will continue to fight the Trump administration's illegal rubber-stamp of a permit for Keystone XL, and this illegal review that completely violated due process of affected landowners on the Mainline Alternative Route," vowed Jane Kleeb, founder of Bold Nebraska, an alliance of local opponents to the project.
In addition to the federal lawsuit challenging Trump's permit, as Bloomberg noted, "the pipeline still is facing a case before the Nebraska Supreme Court, which the company expects to be resolved by late this year or early next."
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
barack obamabold nebraskaenvironmentfossil fuelsfriends of the earthkeystone xlnebraskasierra clubtar sands
Green groups denounced an environmental review released Monday by President Donald Trump's State Department--which claims that building, operating, and maintaining the Nebraska portion of TransCanada's Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would have a "negligible" to "moderate" environmental impact--and vowed to keep fighting the project.
"Once again, the Trump administration is attempting to take a shortcut around the legally required review process on Keystone XL, putting our communities at risk for the sake of propping up the Canadian tar sands industry," declared Sierra Club Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign director Kelly Martin.
In March of 2017, the Trump administration reversed former President Barack Obama's decision to block the pipeline and issued a presidential permit. This new draft assessment (pdf) pertains to the Mainline Alternative Route (MAR), which Nebraska regulators approved in November, even though the path was not evaluated as part of the federal government's 2014 environmental impact statement.
"Landowners, Tribal Nations, and everyday citizens will continue to fight the Trump administration's illegal rubber-stamp of a permit for Keystone XL, and this illegal review."
--Jane Kleeb, Bold Nebraska
The Northern Plains Resource Council, Bold Alliance, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Sierra Club are suing the administration for approving the pipeline using an outdated review and rejected this attempt to, as NRDC senior attorney Jackie Prange put it, "patch over its total failure to comply with the law by releasing this environmental assessment now."
The administration's new draft assessment claims that the MAR portion of the pipeline would have:
- a negligible impact on land use, recreation, and visual resources;
- a negligible to minor impact on socioeconomics and environmental justice;
- a minor impact on geology and soils, air quality and greenhouse gases, and cultural resources; and
- a minor to moderate impact on noise and vibration, water resources, and biological resources.
Environmentalists, meanwhile, condemned the administration for "failing to conduct an adequate review of the project's climate impacts, harm to endangered species, or changes in oil prices and market forces since 2014" by producing this "abbreviated" assessment rather than a supplemental environmental impact statement.
Calling Keystone XL "a threat to our land, water, wildlife, communities, and climate," Martin concluded that the pipeline "was a bad idea when it was proposed a decade ago, it was a bad idea when former President Obama rejected it, and it's an even worse idea now."
"Landowners, Tribal Nations, and everyday citizens will continue to fight the Trump administration's illegal rubber-stamp of a permit for Keystone XL, and this illegal review that completely violated due process of affected landowners on the Mainline Alternative Route," vowed Jane Kleeb, founder of Bold Nebraska, an alliance of local opponents to the project.
In addition to the federal lawsuit challenging Trump's permit, as Bloomberg noted, "the pipeline still is facing a case before the Nebraska Supreme Court, which the company expects to be resolved by late this year or early next."
Green groups denounced an environmental review released Monday by President Donald Trump's State Department--which claims that building, operating, and maintaining the Nebraska portion of TransCanada's Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would have a "negligible" to "moderate" environmental impact--and vowed to keep fighting the project.
"Once again, the Trump administration is attempting to take a shortcut around the legally required review process on Keystone XL, putting our communities at risk for the sake of propping up the Canadian tar sands industry," declared Sierra Club Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign director Kelly Martin.
In March of 2017, the Trump administration reversed former President Barack Obama's decision to block the pipeline and issued a presidential permit. This new draft assessment (pdf) pertains to the Mainline Alternative Route (MAR), which Nebraska regulators approved in November, even though the path was not evaluated as part of the federal government's 2014 environmental impact statement.
"Landowners, Tribal Nations, and everyday citizens will continue to fight the Trump administration's illegal rubber-stamp of a permit for Keystone XL, and this illegal review."
--Jane Kleeb, Bold Nebraska
The Northern Plains Resource Council, Bold Alliance, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Sierra Club are suing the administration for approving the pipeline using an outdated review and rejected this attempt to, as NRDC senior attorney Jackie Prange put it, "patch over its total failure to comply with the law by releasing this environmental assessment now."
The administration's new draft assessment claims that the MAR portion of the pipeline would have:
- a negligible impact on land use, recreation, and visual resources;
- a negligible to minor impact on socioeconomics and environmental justice;
- a minor impact on geology and soils, air quality and greenhouse gases, and cultural resources; and
- a minor to moderate impact on noise and vibration, water resources, and biological resources.
Environmentalists, meanwhile, condemned the administration for "failing to conduct an adequate review of the project's climate impacts, harm to endangered species, or changes in oil prices and market forces since 2014" by producing this "abbreviated" assessment rather than a supplemental environmental impact statement.
Calling Keystone XL "a threat to our land, water, wildlife, communities, and climate," Martin concluded that the pipeline "was a bad idea when it was proposed a decade ago, it was a bad idea when former President Obama rejected it, and it's an even worse idea now."
"Landowners, Tribal Nations, and everyday citizens will continue to fight the Trump administration's illegal rubber-stamp of a permit for Keystone XL, and this illegal review that completely violated due process of affected landowners on the Mainline Alternative Route," vowed Jane Kleeb, founder of Bold Nebraska, an alliance of local opponents to the project.
In addition to the federal lawsuit challenging Trump's permit, as Bloomberg noted, "the pipeline still is facing a case before the Nebraska Supreme Court, which the company expects to be resolved by late this year or early next."
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.