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The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), Enbridge Line 3 in Minnesota, Enbridge Line 5 in Wisconsin and Michigan, and other crude oil pipelines have had, or continue to have, controversial paths towards approval.
With the exception of Keystone XL, corporate interests have won out over strong public resistance and weak regulatory oversight.
Pipeline firms have got the go-ahead on massive infrastructure projects in spite of their their treaty violations, their troubling track records, and their long-term environmental costs, including their significant climate damage.
The Regulatory/Industrial Complex has a Pipeline Playbook that needs to be named and called out.
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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.”
Continue readingThe conference “Pipelines and Indigenous Communities: Extractive Infrastructures & Water-Dependent Livelihoods” will be held this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, March 18-20.
It will be held online only. Participation is free.
“This gathering will bring together Indigenous citizens and environmental leaders, Water Protectors, artists, and researchers from the Arctic, Siberia, and Upper Midwest Great Lakes regions to share experiences, explore knowledge, and discuss resistance strategies concerned with pipeline development,” organizers said.
Continue readingThe protracted resistance to Enbridge Line 3 was unable to stop the pipeline from becoming operational — for now — but efforts to stop the flow of toxic tar sands oil is far from over.
Enbridge Line 3 trenched through northern Minnesota, ending at a terminal in Superior, Wisc. Enbridge’s next step is to build a new Line 5 from Superior, through northern Wisconsin, continuing into Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, crossing the Great Lakes, and ending in Sarnia, Ontario.
Line 5 carries 540,000 barrels of tar sands crude daily. It’s strongly opposed by the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Wisconsin and the Bay Mills Indian Community in Michigan and people concerned about its environmental damage.
“The Line 5 expansion plan threatens the Apostle Islands, Copper Falls State Park, and the thriving recreation and tourism economies of northern Wisconsin,” The Sierra Club Wisconsin wrote. “Enbridge wants to use the same drilling method that poisoned waterways and aquifers in Minnesota, which could irreversibly pollute drinking water for Wisconsin residents and family farms. A spill would be disastrous for the Bad River Tribe and their extensive wild rice beds and fisheries on Lake Superior.”
Here’s one easy step you can take to oppose Line 5.
Continue readingIt’s a great disappointment that Minnesota’s two U.S. senators have shown no leadership in stopping the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline. They’ve avoided taking a position altogether. Young people have been trying to catch up with them, get them to support the Line 3 resistance, and urge President Biden to pull the pipeline’s permits.
In other news, Canada’s invoking treaty rights to keep Enbridge Line 5 operating in Michigan when treaty rights have been roundly ignored in Minnesota around Line 3.
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Darrell G. Seki Sr., chair of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa and Michael Fairbanks, Chair of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe wrote a strong letter to President Biden last winter asking him to shut down Enbridge Line 3 by executive order.
They asked Biden to respect Tribal sovereignty and treaties. “As elected leaders, we wish to state clearly that the Bands never gave consent for the construction of the pipeline through our treaty lands,” the Feb. 2 letter said. “In fact, the Bands’ governing bodies have each enacted multiple Resolutions throughout the course of the five-year regulatory process in opposition to the 338 miles of pipeline construction through the largest concentration of wild rice watersheds in the United States.”
With Walz being a wallflower in the Line 3 debate, Tribes, water protectors and their allies have ramped up presidential pressure.
Last month, more than 300 organizations “representing Indigenous groups and national and local organizations, sent a letter to the Biden Administration calling on him to immediately suspend or revoke Enbridge’s Line 3 permits,” WECAN reported.
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