Why even construct a pipeline that would degrade the environment and “insult … the heritage of the Sioux?” given the huge oil glut snarling the energy markets, it added.

Friday’s editorial is not the first time the paper has screamed “racism” when discussing the $3.8 billion project.

Prominent anti-oil activist Bill McKibben, for instance, called the entire project – beginning to end – an exercise in “environmental racism” in an Oct. 28 editorial piece for the paper. He has spent the last several months urging his cohorts to join the crusade against the Dakota Access Pipeline, a $3.8 billion project forged by Energy Transfer Partners.

“The solution, in keeping with American history,” he wrote, referencing the DAPL’s decision to reroute the pipeline, was to “make the crossing instead just above the Standing Rock reservation, where the poverty rate is nearly three times the national average.”

He then goes on to suggest the pipeline will likely end in the second coming of “Flint,” a reference to the mostly black city in Michigan still reeling from lead-tainted water due to government incompetence.

Hostile reactions are coming to a head between protesters on one side, the company involved in the project on the other, and locals seemingly caught in between.

The Obama administration, for its part, shelved the 1,100-mile-long pipeline in September in an effort to give the government more time to determine the effects the project will have on the environment. The president’s move was likely prompted by the growing protests.

The D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals came to a similar decision a week later, temporarily halting construction within 20 miles of Lake Oahe while the court considers whether to order a longer delay.

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