A U.S. federal judge ruled that the State Department must conduct a new environmental review of the project after the pipeline’s route was changed. The State Department is responsible for one of the permits that the project must obtain because it crosses the U.S.-Canadian border. The project was forced to change routes in Nebraska to avoid sensitive areas. Nebraska regulators gave the project approval, but only for the revised route. But the rerouting of the project subjects the project to new legal scrutiny. The Indigenous Environmental Network and other groups sued and a federal judge agreed with them, arguing that the State Department must redo the environmental assessment because the changed route is “interdependent” on the entire project. The U.S. government said that it was only responsible for the cross-border section, but the judge called that argument “unpersuasive” since, as Bloomberg notes , the revised route will be longer, […]