Tribes press judge to halt Keystone XL pipeline

Planned camps to house workers pose health risks, lawyers say

BILLINGS, MONT.—American Indian tribes and environmental groups are pressuring a federal judge to shut down work on the disputed Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to Nebraska less than two weeks after it started, because of fears over workers spreading the coronavirus and worries about a future spill.

Pipeline sponsor TC Energy is rushing ahead amid the pandemic as it tries to complete significant work on the pipeline to make it harder to stop, lawyers for several tribes and groups said in court documents ahead of a Thursday teleconference hearing to decide if the construction should be halted.

They warned that plans to build construction camps housing up to 1,000 workers each “pose serious, immediate and irreparable health risks to the tribes during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“The health-care systems in tribal and rural communities are already strained to provide basic health-care services, much less the critical emergency services necessary to responded to an outbreak of COVID-19,” said lawyers for the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota and the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre tribes of the Fort Belknap reservation in Montana.

U.S. President Donald Trump is a champion of the $8-billion (U.S.) project and gave it a presidential authorization in a bid to circumvent a 2018 court ruling that had blocked it.

The same judge who made that ruling will preside over the hearing to decide if construction should be stopped while the court considers if Trump’s authorization was legal. Late Wednesday, Morris handed another setback to TC Energy with a ruling that invalidated a key U.S. Army Corps of Engineers clean water permit. The so-called nationwide permit applied to a broad range of projects including Keystone XL, and is needed to so the pipeline can cross rivers, streams and other waterways.

Keystone XL would have hundreds of those crossings along its 1,930-kilometre route from Hardisty, Alta., to Steele City, Neb. It would carry up to 830,000 barrels of crude daily and opponents say a spill is inevitable.

Workers on Monday installed the first section of pipe across the U.S.-Canada border in northern Montana, according to court documents filed by the Calgary-based company.

The border crossing doesn’t require the Army Corps permit that was thrown out because there are no nearby waterways. But it’s an obstacle to much further work, and a company spokesperson warned the judge’s ruling has broad implications for projects across the U.S.