ANCHORAGE (AK)— Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic and five allied groups filed a motion in U.S. District Court last week requesting a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order to stop ConocoPhillips from starting winter road construction and gravel mining for its Willow project.

“We have experienced rising health issues, and the dismantling of traditional practices and food sources because of oil extraction and industrialization on the Arctic Slope,” said Siqiñiq Maupin, executive director of Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic. “We have experienced the silencing and paternalism of public agencies that are supposed to listen to us fully, to understand and take into consideration our concerns, and to protect the health and well-being of all of us, not just the profit interests of corporations. We need the exploitation of the Arctic to stop, and the prioritization of our health and well-being to begin again.”

Trustees for Alaska filed the motion as part of Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic’s current lawsuit filed in November. The motion calls out the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for approving permits without taking a hard look at impacts as required by the National Environmental Policy Act. This failure is due largely to the fact that BLM did not even have permit applications from Conoco when doing its analysis. It also challenges the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s failure to ensure impacts to polar bears will be mitigated.

“BLM has been playing permitting whack-a-mole by rubber-stamping Conoco’s permits as they come in, and basing its actions on its prior approval of the project,” said Bridget Psarianos, staff attorney with Trustees for Alaska. “The fact is that the agency’s approval is founded on an illegal and deficient environmental impact statement. BLM has never had even close to the necessary details to do a proper NEPA analysis of impacts and harms. Now that it finally has the permit applications and those details in hand, it by law needs to go back and do the analysis it never did in the first place.”

Conoco applied for its permits and rights-of-way to drill in December. BLM is quickly approving the permits, enabling ConocoPhillips to build roads and mine for gravel this winter. Today’s motion spells out how road construction and gravel mining pose immediate threats to fish, wildlife, wetlands, and the community of Nuiqsut. Willow would further pose risks to threatened polar bears, and the FWS failed to properly consider ways to mitigate those harms when issuing its Biological Opinion.

The motion asks the court to stop all Willow construction activities until it has time to evaluate the entire case. It also requests a ruling on the injunction by Feb. 1, the day before Conoco intends to begin winter construction activities.

Law firm Trustees for Alaska represents six clients in the lawsuit: Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, Alaska Wilderness League, Defenders of Wildlife, Northern Alaska Environmental Center, Sierra Club, and The Wilderness Society.

Find the motion’s memorandum here.

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