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Our country has significant infrastructure needs. Here, the focus is on energy, but America's roads, bridges, airports, ports and more all need attention, too. All of them energy and otherwise also need government approval processes that are fair and efficient so that important infrastructure projects can be built in a timely manner.

Unfortunately, these principles as well as the rule of law are at risk with the Obama administration's move to halt construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in South Dakota. The uncertainty the administration injected into the situation is wreaking havoc with workers on a project that's already 60 percent complete. And it could have a chilling effect on all kinds of infrastructure projects in the future.

Workers' unions and groups representing contractors, suppliers, equipment distributors and others are weighing in with a letter to President Obama, who throughout his presidency has advocated for more infrastructure construction. The letter, signed by 18 organizations, cited the president's past support for 21^st-century infrastructure and called the Dakota Access intervention unprecedented.†From the letter:

Mr. President, this is not how our country should operate. The Dakota Access Pipeline has undergone a rigorous and well established environmental and regulatory review.  It has already invested $2.5 billion in construction capital, employing almost ten thousand highly skilled, highly paid workers.  To arbitrarily preempt that process, as these agencies have done, is not only grossly unfair, it will have a chilling impact on the willingness of developers in all fields to commit time and capital to the construction of the infrastructure our nation so vitally needs.  

The above follows another letter to the president this week from five major labor unions the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Laborers' International Union of North America, the International Brotherhood of Electri...