This post written in collaboration with Waadookawaad Amikwag
Sheet pilings laid out at a Line 3 worksite, June, 2021.
The following summarizes the causes and impacts of aquifer breaches resulting from construction of the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline. This post will be updated when new information becomes available.
Line 3 construction ended more than 19 months ago, Oct. 1, 2021. State regulators have been slow to announce all the environmental damage that occurred. They say they don’t release information until they finish their investigations.
A volunteer group called Wadookawaad Amikwag (Anishinaabemowin for “Those Who Help Beaver”) has been concerned about state agencies’ seeming lack of urgency and the lack of public information available. Volunteers are investigating on their own.
The multinational, behemoth, energy transportation company Enbridge must be paying its PR department overtime.
Waadookawaad Amikwag (Anishinaabemowin for Those Who Help Beaver) broke the story this week that construction of the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline breached an aquifer near Moose Lake. That brings the number Line 3-related aquifer breaches to four, and that’s not counting environmental damage done to Walker Brook.
Local and national media have picked up the story, from the Seattle Times to CBS News.
Here’s what Enbridge has been telling other media about what happened at Moose Lake.
State regulators are stingy with information, so it’s up to citizen volunteers to make it public
Line 3 construction breached an aquifer just west of the Fond du Lac Reservation, Sept. 10, 2021
This post is a collaboration between Healing Minnesota Stories and Waadookawaad Amikwag.
Correction: An early version of this post mischaracterized the PUC’s role. The PUC was not required to approve a route. The post has been updated.
The list of Minnesota wetlands and aquifers damaged by Enbridge Line 3 construction just keeps growing.
During Line 3 construction in 2021, we learned Line 3 construction breached three aquifers:
Clearbrook: Clearwater County, 1855 Treaty Territory, about 10 miles from the Red Lake Reservation;
LaSalle Valley: Hubbard County, 1855 Treaty Territory, about 10 miles from the White Earth Reservation;
St. Louis County, 400 feet from the Fond du Lac Reservation, 1854 Treaty Territory.
Since construction ended, citizen volunteers have continued to patrol the pipeline corridor, identifying damage state regulators haven’t found yet, or at least haven’t made public. Volunteers include drone operators, ground spotters, and professional scientists.
In March, the group made public significant water problems at Walker Brook (Clearwater County in 1855 Treaty Territory, 10 miles from the White Earth Reservation). (Not an aquifer breach, but still damaging.)
The volunteer group now is confirming a fourth aquifer breach in a wetland just south of Moose Lake, a wild rice lake in Aitkin County in 1855 Treaty Territory, about 50 miles from the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe’s Reservation.
In 2021, Enbridge Line 3 construction workers breached an aquifer in St. Louis County, just 400 feet west of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa reservation.
Enbridge hadn’t done — nor did the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) require — any analysis of the area’s hydrology.
This was one of at least three such aquifer breaches created by Line 3 construction, a violation of Enbridge’s permit and state law.
The St. Louis County breach:
Took nearly seven months to repair. (The breach occurred Sept. 10, 2021 and the repair was reported complete on April 7.)
Released more than 263 million gallons of groundwater.
Required 24/7 grouting activities (think cement) to repair, starting March 8 and finishing April 5 (with two pauses to check for effectiveness).
Required more than 20,000 cubic feet of grout to fix, according to Enbridge’s final report on the repair. (That’s enough grout to build a wall two-feet thick, 20-feet tall, and 500-feet long.)
Maybe it doesn’t know the answer. Maybe it’s just not telling. Either way, it’s bad.
If a contractor working on your house damaged your foundation, wouldn’t your first question be: “Why did this happen?”
Nearly two years ago, workers building the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline failed to follow construction plans and broke through an aquifer in Clearwater County, known as the Clearbrook breach. It wouldn’t get fixed for a year and would release 72.8 million gallons of groundwater.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has announced sanctions, but has yet to explain why Line 3 workers didn’t follow construction plans and damaged the aquifer.
Further Enbridge should have reported the aquifer breach right away. The DNR wouldn’t learn about the violation for four-plus months. (And the DNR didn’t learn about it from Enbridge, but indirectly from Independent Environmental Monitors.)
The DNR still hasn’t explained why Enbridge didn’t report the aquifer breach in a timely manner.
In announcing sanctions Sept. 16, DNR Commissioner Sarah Strommen said: “This never should have happened, and we are holding the company fully accountable.”
However, the DNR is failing to answer these critical questions about the breach, and without transparency there is no accountability.
State environmental watchdogs are investigating, but not releasing any details
Video screen grab showing construction matting at Walker Brook.
This a corrected version of an earlier blog. The original version incorrectly said the DNR and MPCA made a joint statement about the Walker Brook situation. This post includes their separate statements. The previous post has been taken down. I regret the error.
More environmental damage is coming to light from construction of the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline, and its due to citizen volunteers.
The group Waadookawaad Amikwag (Anishinaabe for “Those Who Help Beaver”) has been monitoring the construction corridor for unreported environmental damage out of concern that state regulators weren’t paying attention to it.
Waadookawaad Amikwag released a video this week of what they say is a fourth cold underground water breach, this one where Line 3 crosses Walker Brook South in Clearwater County.
The DNR denies that there is an aquifer breach, suggesting it is “an upwelling of shallow groundwater resources that has complicated site restoration.”
(The DNR’s statement is silent on the connection between Line 3 construction and the upwelling of shallow groundwater or how much groundwater has upwelled.)
This comes on top of three Line 3 aquifer breaches we already know about: Clearbrook, LaSalle Creek, and Fond du Lac.
All this environmental damage falls disproportionately on the Anishinaabe (Chippewa and Ojibwe) nations in northern Minnesota. In approving Line 3’s Certificate of Need, the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission “expressed serious concern with the Project’s impacts to indigenous populations, acknowledging that the Project would traverse ceded territories where Minnesota’s Ojibwe and Chippewa tribes hold … hunting, fishing, and gathering rights.”
It’s part of Manoomin (wild rice) litigation before White Earth Appeals Court
The construction of Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline resulted in as many as six aquifer breaches, in addition to the three we already know about.
That information was included in a Friday filing with the White Earth Appeals Court by Manoomin (wild rice), the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, and others. It was part of a formal request that the court reconsider their complaint against the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) for granting Enbridge massive dewatering permits to build Line 3. That dewatering damaged Manoomin and harmed the well being of White Earth residents, the filing said.
The White Earth Court of Appeals dismissed the case March 10. Plaintiffs have provided new information to bolster their motion for reconsideration.
To those Wisconsin and Michigan residents worried about construction of the Enbridge Line 5 tar sands pipeline: Beware the aquifer breaches and monitor any dewatering permit. Let your state regulators know about the company’s track record and that you expect a stronger state response than what happened in Minnesota.
Here, Enbridge violated state permits where Line 3 construction crews broke through aquifers in three places. In all, these breaches released at least 285 million gallons of groundwater.
We’re only now learning the extent of the damage that occurred last fall. Until this week, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has withheld even basic information on two of the three breaches, such as their locations and extent of groundwater loss.
It’s only the latest example of how Minnesota’s regulatory system is set up to help large corporations like Enbridge rather than serve the public interest.
Minnesota DNR belatedly provides new information on Line 3 aquifer breeches
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had raised a number of warnings about Enbridge’s plan to replace its Line 5 tar sands pipeline, including the pipeline’s impact on water quality and Native nations.
The pipeline would run through the watershed that feeds into the Kakagon-Bad River Slough Complex, which abuts Lake Superior. It’s an environmentally sensitive area: 10,760 acres of mostly undeveloped sloughs, bogs, and coastal lagoons, critical to the lake’s health.
For instance, the area harbors “the largest natural wild rice bed on the Great Lakes,” according to the Ramsar International Treaty. “[T]hese wild rice beds are becoming increasingly fragmented on Lake Superior – as the only remaining extensive coastal wild rice bed in the Great Lakes region, it is critical to ensuring the genetic diversity of Lake Superior wild rice.”
Partnership for Civil Justice Fund seeks information on the ties between Enbridge, sheriff’s offices
Government transparency is critical to make the engine of democracy work. If we don’t know how and why the government makes decisions, we can’t make informed choices.
In the case of the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline, a greedy corporation and weak state regulators have scapegoated Native American water protectors and their allies as lawbreakers. Enbridge’s Line 3 construction has done more harm than the front-line activists, yet the company doesn’t face nearly the public scrutiny or penalties.
Information is power. What information is publicly available — or not available — shapes public opinion.
Law enforcement agencies put water protectors under the microscope and closely monitored their activities while state regulators allowed Enbridge to operate in the dark.
This imbalance in scrutiny is built into our public institutions’ structures.
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