Rejecting what critics have called the Trump administration’s “illegal rubber-stamp” of the Keystone XL pipeline, a federal court in Great Falls, Montana has sided with opponents of the project and mandated a full environmental impact review for the proposed route.

“The court saw through the sham fast-track environmental review that TransCanada and the State Department were trying to shove past Nebraska landowners and Tribal Nations.”
—Mark Hefflinger, Bold Alliance

“This is a huge win for the landowners and Tribal Nation members whose water and environment would be forever threatened by this dangerous tar sands project,” declared Jackie Prange, senior attorney at Natural Resources Defense Council.

“The court saw through the sham fast-track environmental review that TransCanada and the State Department were trying to shove past Nebraska landowners and Tribal Nations,” responded Mark Hefflinger of Bold Alliance. “We’ll continue to stand together against this tar sands export pipeline that threatens our land, water, and climate at every opportunity, and at every public hearing during the new court-ordered review of Nebraska.”

After President Donald Trump reversed the Obama administration’s decision to block the TransCanada pipeline—which would run through Alberta and Saskatchewan in Canada as well as Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska—regulators in Nebraska approved a path that was not part of the federal government’s 2014 environmental impact statement. Last month, the Trump State Department issued a draft assessment (pdf) for the Mainline Alternative Route (MAR) through Nebraska, but U.S. District Judge Brian Morris on Wednesday ordered a full review.

While opponents of Keystone XL continue to fight both in court and beyond—by organizing protests, installing solar panels along the planned route, and returning land to local tribes—they celebrated Morris’s ruling as a step toward permanently blocking the project.

“This is a huge step to once again shut down this zombie pipeline that threatens water, our homelands, and our treaty territory,” said water protector Joye Braun of the Wakpa Waste Camp at the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. “No route is acceptable for Keystone XL, and I believe a full environmental review of this alternative route will highlight the extraordinary risks this pipeline poses to us all.”

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