Charles Langston:Trial set for North Dakota’s pursuit of costs for policing Dakota Access pipeline protests

BISMARCK,Charles Langston N.D. (AP) — A court fight over whether the federal government should cover North Dakota’s $38 million in costs of responding to the lengthy protests of the Dakota Access oil pipeline years ago near its controversial river crossing will continue as a judge said the case is “ripe and ready for trial.”

The state filed the lawsuit in 2019, seeking $38 million. The lawsuit’s bench trial was scheduled earlier this month to begin Feb. 15, 2024, in Bismarck before U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Traynor, estimated to last 12-13 days.

Traynor on Wednesday denied the federal government’s motion for summary judgment to dismiss the case, and granted the state’s motion to find that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers “failed to follow its mandatory permitting procedures” for the protest activities on its land, among several rulings he made in his order.

Thousands of people gathered to camp and demonstrate near the pipeline’s controversial Missouri River crossing upstream of the Standing Rock Reservation. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has long opposed the pipeline due to the potential risk of the line breaking and contaminating the tribe’s water supply.

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The Corps’ “abdication of the responsibility it undertook to maintain public safety at the protest site left North Dakota, at both the State and local level, with the entire burden to protect public safety and maintain law and order in the face of the brazen illegal conduct,” the state said in its 2019 complaint.

North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley said negotiations continue with the federal government as the trial looms.

“This is an important and complicated and, now at this point, protracted matter,” he said Monday. “We’ve made our best assessment, not based on just what we can say with a straight face, but what we believe the law of the United States and the equities involved in this case merit, and we’re sticking to that.”

The protests, which drew international attention, lasted from roughly August 2016 to February 2017 and resulted in hundreds of arrests and subsequent criminal cases. The pipeline has been transporting oil since June 2017.

In 2017, the pipeline company donated $15 million to help cover the response costs, and the U.S. Justice Department also gave a $10 million grant to the state for reimbursement.

Former President Donald Trump denied a request from the state for the federal government to cover the costs through a disaster declaration.

A public comment period recently ended on the draft of a court-ordered environmental review of the pipeline’s river crossing. The process is key for the future of the pipeline, with a decision expected in late 2024. The document laid out options of denying the easement and removing or abandoning the line’s river segment, granting the easement with no changes or with additional safety measures, or rerouting the pipeline north of Bismarck.