A second lawsuit is challenging an Army Corps of Engineers permit granting ConocoPhillips access to leases within the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska.
The Center for Biological Diversity sued Wednesday to block a plan approved by the Corps to connect a drilling site within the reserve to existing oil infrastructure by road and a bridge spanning the Colville River.
Center attorney Deirdre McDonnell says in an announcement the project will kick the door open for industrial development of priceless caribou, bird and other wildlife habitat
The lawsuit was filed in Anchorage federal court.
Trustees for Alaska, representing seven residents of Nuiqsut, the only village within the reserve, sued the Corps in February. Villagers say petroleum development on the Colville River Delta harms their subsistence life of hunting and fishing.