Hundreds of those protesters cheered the decision by the Army Corps of Engineers not to allow the extension of the Dakota Access Oil Pipeline beneath a Missouri River reservoir.
They were given a deadline of today to leave the area, but authorities say they won’t forcibly remove them. The weather may do that for them, temperatures are supposed to drop this week.
Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, the company that’s building the pipeline, calls the decision politically motivated, and accused President Obama’s administration of putting it off until he leaves office.
President-elect Donald Trump, a pipeline supporter, takes office in January, but it’s not clear what steps he’d be able to take to reverse the decision or how quickly it could happen.