Court orders Dakota Access pipeline to shut down

A district court ruled Monday the Dakota Access Pipeline must shut down within 30 days, according to a copy of the brief obtained by USA Today.

The decision marked the end of a years-long legal battle over the Energy Transfer Partners-owned pipeline's environmental damage to the Missouri River.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia scrapped a key permit from the Army Corps of Engineers, and ordered the pipeline to end its three-year run of delivering oil out of North Dakota's Bakken shale basin to its endpoint in Illinois.

President Donald Trump granted the permit in 2017 over the objections of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and environmental activists.

"The Corps had failed to produce an Environmental Impact Statement despite conditions that triggered such a requirement," the court ruling stated. "Although mindful of the disruption such a shutdown will cause, the Court now concludes that the answer is yes. Clear precedent favoring vacatur during such a remand coupled with the seriousness of the Corps' deficiencies outweighs the negative effects of halting the oil flow for the thirteen months that the Corps believes the creation of an EIS will take."