Save Our Illinois Land v. Illinois Commerce Commission

The Illinois Appellate Court vacated the Illinois Commerce Commission’s approval of the addition of three pumping stations on the Dakota Access Pipeline to increase the pipeline’s throughput from 570,000 barrels per day to 1.1 million barrels per day. The court, however, rejected a number of the arguments raised by environmental groups challenging the approval, including their contentions that the Commission failed to discuss the Illinois governor’s 2019 executive order on climate change or a brief submitted by Illinois and other states in a federal challenge to the pipeline that cited the “devastating effects of a changing climate.” The groups also said the Commission had entirely ignored the testimony of the climatologist James Hansen, in which he warned of the proposed pumping stations’ climate impacts. The court noted that its standard of review was deferential and that the Commission had not made conclusions “against the manifest weight of the evidence” when it determined that the additional crude oil would reach a destination and be consumed “one way or another” and that transporting oil by pipeline was better for the climate than transporting by locomotive.