A US judge has rejected a legal challenge by Native American tribes and environmental activists to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, after President Donald Trump ordered the controversial project to continue.
Judge James Boasberg of the US District Court for the District of Columbia rejected the tribes’ request for an injunction to halt the go-ahead last month by the Army Corps of Engineers for the last link of the pipeline in North Dakota.
In February, the Army Corps said it would allow the final 1.5 miles of the more than 1170-mile (1,885-km) pipeline to go under the Missouri River north of a drinking water reservation used by Native Americans.
Led by the Standing Rock Sioux, more than 100 Native American tribes have warned that the planned path would destroy their sacred sites and contaminate their water.
The Army Corps’s green-light came days after Trump signed an executive order clearing the way for the completion of the $3.8 billion pipeline,…