I guess I am missing something: Why did the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) get involved in the Dakota Access Pipeline? Why is their approval needed? And, does the USACE approve all the pipelines that criss-cross the country?
The pipeline falls under the purview of the Army Corps of Engineers because of two things:
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The Army Corps of Engineers is the regulatory body for “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act and the Rivers and Harbors Act, and so it may regulate permits and easements required by the pipeline to cross those waters.
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Some of the pipeline is to be built on government-owned land, and the Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for regulating constructions on federal land that impact flood control and navigation.
The details can be found here: Frequently Asked Questions DAPL > Omaha District > Fact Sheet Article View
But why is the Army a regulator of civilian matters that have nothing to do with military matters?
For historical reasons; the ACE is where a lot of civil engineers ended up in the 19th century and so they’ve always been involved in large civil works projects like flood control, dams, and diverting rivers. Later statutes formalized that role.
ETA: And despite being a component of the Army, the ACE has a relatively large corps of civilian engineers and staff. But they do still do combat engineering stuff as well.
I forgot this part, sorry.
The ACE doesn’t have jurisdiction over pipelines that are built on private land and don’t cross any federally-regulated waterways (rivers, lakes, etc. there has been a lot of legal wrangling over what counts as the “waters of the United States” - more or less it definitely includes all navigable waters, like the Lake Oahe/Missouri River where the pipeline was planned to cross, and it may or may not include smaller tributaries that feed into such navigable waters, depending on the courts.)
The U.S. in general has no federal pipeline agency responsible for all pipeline regulation. Various agencies might weigh in depending on how the pipeline fits into their areas.
The short answer is “because that’s what the Clean Water Act says”.
The follow-up answer is “Congress wrote the CWA that way because [what friedo said]”
The Corps is responsible for Lake Oahe which starts at the dam at Pierre SD and makes it close to Bismark when full. When the dam was built, the government bought all the land up to a certain elevation along the Missouri and tributaries which would be the high water mark if the dam was at max capacity. I grew up in the area and on my Dad’s ranch there were fence posts that mark the “Corps land” which was a long ways inland.
But some of the big dams out west are built by the BLM, bureau of land management. Why did they get control instead of the ACE?
I don’t know which ones are run by BLM, but there is precedent in that Congress created the Bureau of Reclamation in the early 1900s to manage water resources in the west.
ACE doesn’t the full purview of “water management” - it just has water management as regards the Rivers and Harbors Act and the Clean Water Act in its portfolio, which was decided by Congress when it passed those laws. Congress can assign different agencies to different aspects of water management, and could change its earlier division of labor if it wanted to.
actually I meant to say Bureau of Reclamation instead of BLM
…and yet, no sooner did I post this question than the news over this pipeline read “They’ve won the battle, not the war” or words to this effect. So, apparently, the USACE is not the end all to the be all.
Well, there is the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
Additionally, pipelines are regulated by 49 CFR Part 192
Well, the world passes you by - formed in 2004.
It is. But the USACE is an agency of the executive branch, and our incoming POTUS can direct it to re-issue the permit.
It’s perhaps worth noting that the entity which ultimately denied the permit was not the USACE but the Army itself, in the form of the Army’s “assistant secretary for civil works”. However, the Army has authority over the USACE.
Given that the Assistant Secretary for Civil Works is the Army office that oversees the Army Corps of Engineers, what’s the difference? It’s not like the people who handled the permit paperwork didn’t work for the Army Corps of Engineers.
The assistent secretary is appointed by the president.
Its a political position. The office employs civilians. Some of which will be civil engineers a… They communicate between Congress, affected public service and other branches of government, and the army… and they supervise to ensure policy is followed and implemented.
Because the army may be over eager to “do stuff” … to employ their staff and to get their names on things.
And so its the assistent secretary and his/her office who decides on questions put to the ACE and what the ACE does or doesn’t do.
My point was that the decision was made by a more political appointee rather than by a civil service engineering type.
But that’s not unusual at all - it’s the general process everywhere in government, federal, state, and local.
Usually, for example, marriage licenses are approved by employees of the County Clerk’s office, and in non-controversial situations the marriage license goes out under the authority of the County/City/Court/Town Clerk (an elected position in some places, a political appointee in others) even if it never actually came to their attention.
In some situations, an employee of the office will take the marriage license to the officeholder and say - hey, this one’s not routine. Licenses for same-sex couples is a recent example; they start at the bureaucrat level, and might get pushed up to the political appointee or elected official, who will then make a decision.
The pipeline permit approval is not exactly like the marriage license approval situation, but the line of civil servant working under a political appointee or elected official is the same in both situations, the authority under which the civil servant issues the uncontroversial license/permit is the same authority under which the political appointee/elected official issues/denies the controversial license/permit. This isn’t situation of a different authority being involved, but rather which individual people are exercising that authority in the controversial situation as opposed to the uncontroversial one.