Trump’s administration recently reversed the Obama administration’s decision to deny a permit to TransCanada for the Keystone XL pipeline.
Both the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Center for Biological Diversity announced today that several organizations have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for this decision. Among the plaintiffs are:
- The NRDC
- The Center for Biological Diversity
- The Sierra Club
- The Northern Plains Resource Council
- The Bold Alliance
- Friends of the Earth
The Trump administration’s haste to OK the Pipeline and the administration’s lack of government experience is working against it. This newest lawsuit, like the one against the Department of the Interior opening up federal land to coal exploitation, is based on the government’s egregious violation of NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act.
In the complaint:
In their haste to issue a cross-border permit requested by TransCanada Keystone Pipeline L.P. (TransCanada), Keystone XL’s proponent, Defendants United States Department of State (State Department) and Under Secretary of State Shannon have violated the National Environmental Policy Act and other law and ignored significant new information that bears on the project’s threats to the people, environment, and national interests of the United States. 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 crossborder permit.