Seth Tupper/South Dakota Searchlight
Tribes and environmental groups scored at least a temporary victory this week in their multipronged effort to stop exploratory drilling in culturally significant areas of South Dakota’s Black Hills.
A federal judge in Rapid City granted a temporary restraining order Monday evening against exploratory drilling near the high mountain meadow known as Pe’ Sla, or Reynolds Prairie, in the central Black Hills. The ruling came after a hearing that drew an overflow crowd of people opposed to the project.
Pe’ Sla is one of several Black Hills sites that corresponds with celestial features in traditional Lakota spirituality. Lakota people use the area, some of which is tribally owned, for prayer, ceremonies and cultural activities.
The order requires Pete Lien & Sons to halt its project temporarily while the lawsuit against it continues. The company is exploring for graphite, which is used in electric vehicle batteries, lubricants, pencils and other products.
Two lawsuits are pending against the project, and the restraining order applies to both. The plaintiffs in one are nonprofits: the Black Hills Clean Water Alliance and an Indigenous rights group known as NDN Collective, both based in Rapid City, and Earthworks in Washington, D.C. Nine Native American tribes are the plaintiffs in the other lawsuit. The defendant in both cases is the U.S. Forest Service, which approved the drilling plan on federally managed land.
The company recently began drilling, according to the nonprofit plaintiffs’ brief in support of their motion for the temporary restraining order. Sacred religious ceremonies in the Pe’ Sla area began on Saturday, May 2, the motion stated, making the request for the temporary restraining order “especially urgent.”
“These industrial operations irreparably harm plaintiffs’ members’ use of the Pe’ Sla landscape,” they said in their brief.
Drilling is halted under the restraining order as the plaintiffs seek a longer-term order known as an injunction. Ultimately, the plaintiffs want to overturn the Forest Service’s approval of the project.
The federal agency said in a brief opposing the restraining order that the project is already “halfway complete,” and said the agency properly considered and approved the drilling plan.
Meanwhile, some of the plaintiffs and their supporters are engaged in another struggle against exploratory drilling for uranium in the southern Black Hills. That proposed project is near Craven Canyon, where the rock walls are carved with Native American petroglyphs believed to be thousands of years old.
The state’s Board of Minerals and Environment is scheduled to conduct a weeklong hearing beginning May 18 in Hot Springs on that project’s permit application.
