Beer should no longer flow in Whiteclay, Nebraska state regulators have decided.

The Nebraska Liquor Control Commission decided Wednesday to deny licenses to the four beer stores in the alcohol-soaked outpost in northwest Nebraska. The small town is only a few miles from from the dry Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Commissioners voted unanimously, 3-0, to deny the licenses.

“This is not a place that can exist any longer,” said commission Chairman Bob Batt of Omaha, who moved to deny the licenses.

“This is not a place that can exist as a purveyor of alcohol at all.”

Cheers and applause broke out in the cramped hearing room at the State Office Building, where activists gathered to hear the decision.

“We’ve never come this far,” said former Oglala Lakota President Bryan Brewer. “I’m just so happy for our people.”

The beer stores — which also face allegations from the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office of selling to bootleggers — will almost certainly appeal the decision.

Alcohol sales in Whiteclay had been in question for months. The Liquor Commission ordered the beer stores to reapply for their licenses in November, citing concerns about law enforcement in the area.

Whiteclay has about eight official residents, but combined, its liquor stores sell millions of cans of beer each year, much of it to members of Pine Ridge’s resident Oglala Lakota Tribe.

Sheridan County, where Whiteclay is located, is patrolled by a sheriff’s office with five full-time deputies.

The tribe’s top law enforcement official told the liquor commissioners during an April 6 hearing that Whiteclay crime routinely spills over into Pine Ridge, and Nebraska authorities do little to help. And a group of street ministers who live in Whiteclay testified about persistently dangerous, disgusting conditions in the unincorporated village.

But aside from a single remark last fall by a Sheridan County commissioner, local authorities have insisted they have the resources to maintain public safety.