In this post:
For the Rule of Law to mean anything, it has to be able to hold wealthy people and large companies accountable as well as the average person. One of the sadder chapters in the Line 3 pipeline pipeline saga was the pitifully meager penalties available to hold Enbridge accountable for blatant permit violations.
Enbridge completed the pipeline two years ago. Groups of advocates still are trying to force the state to do what it should have done immediately: Hold Enbridge responsible for the environmental damage it created.
Advocates have filed a pleading in District Court in Clearwater County to enforce the one weak criminal charge the state brought against Enbridge: A misdemeanor for the unpermitted discharge of state waters. A year ago, the state and Enbridge entered an agreement, where Enbridge would admit to its wrongdoing. In return, the state said it would dismiss the charges in a year as long as Enbridge remained law abiding.
The charge is set to be dismissed this week/
Advocates say Enbridge hasn’t remained on good behavior. They have identified sites of suspected aquifer breaches that neither the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) nor Enbridge have made known publicly.
Enbridge knew or should have known about all of these breaches and done something about them.
The pleading asks the Court to enforce the misdemeanor charge: specifically to order the imprisonment of responsible Enbridge executives for 90 days or an otherwise definite term, “and to order each Enbridge executive to individually pay $1000 for each aquifer breach in Minnesota along the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline corridor.”
Continue readingMany people are rightfully celebrating a decision by a Minnesota District Court Judge Thursday to dismiss charges against three Indigenous woman for their resistance to the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline.
Winona LaDuke, Tania Aubid, and Dawn Goodwin faced several charges for “disrupting” pipeline construction in 2021 on the banks of the Mississippi River at a Line 3 construction site in Aitkin County.
Judge Leslie Metzen made a powerful statement in dismissing the charges.
“In the interests of justice the charges against these three individuals who were exercising their rights to free speech and to freely express their spiritual beliefs should be dismissed,” the order said. “To criminalize their behavior would be the crime.”
Yes, that’s a good thing to acknowledge. Yet let’s not lose sight of the bigger picture: Line 3 construction did extensive environmental damage and Enbridge has faced much less scrutiny than the water protectors who were trying to prevent the damage.
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This post was written in collaboration with Waadookawaad Amikwag.
Construction of the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline has created at least four artesian aquifer breaches – at Clearbrook, LaSalle Valley, Fond du Lac, and Moose Lake – all from the same cause: Driving sheet pilings too deep into the ground. A fifth site – Walker Brook – technically might not count as an artesian aquifer breach, but the environmental damage there is significant and needs to remain in the public eye.
Line 3’s 337-mile route went through many areas with high water tables, making it difficult to install the pipeline. If workers starting digging a trench, it would quickly fill with water.
Construction workers would drive 30-foot-tall sheet pilings into the ground, one on each side of the planned trench. The goal was to block groundwater flow into the trench so it would be dry enough to work.
However, Line 3 also crosses lands with shallow artesian aquifers. These are areas where groundwater is held underground, under pressure, by an impervious layer of soil, such as clay. Break the clay seal with a sheet piling and the water rushes to the surface.
Enbridge either didn’t do its homework on artesian aquifer locations on Line 3’s route, or it chose to be willfully ignorant of them. Either way, it kept repeating the same kind of damage.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) failed to intervene effectively. It wrote a weak permit. It didn’t even know the amount or location of the sheet pilings Enbridge used for the project.
Randall Doneen, Section Manager for the DNRs’ Conservation Assistance and Regulation unit, wrote Healing Minnesota Stories: “We do not have sheet piling locations across the entire line. When we investigate specific locations we get the sheet piling information on that location from the company.”
Continue readingLast updated: Aug. 8, 2023
This post written in collaboration with Waadookawaad Amikwag
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.
Continue readingThe 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.
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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:
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.
Continue readingThe Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR), Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) and Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) seemed to have had an unfounded confidence that Enbridge would follow the rules while building its new Line 3/93 tar sands pipeline across 337 miles of northern Minnesota.
As we now know, Line 3/93 construction resulted in three significant aquifer breaches and extensive water problems in Walker Brook Valley.
All were preventable. There is likely more damage than currently made public.
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The environmental damage from building the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline appears to be much greater than what is publicly known.
In response to a Data Practice Act, Healing Minnesota Stories obtained a copy of a “Dewatering Permit” the Minnesota Department of Resources (DNR) issued Enbridge last Fall, more than ten months after construction was deemed complete and the pipeline operational.
The permit runs from Aug 12, 2022 to Dec. 31, 2023, or more than 16 months. That’s more time than it took Enbridge (10 months) to build Line 3 in the first place.
The permit allows Enbridge to dewater up to one billion gallons per year. That’s double Enbridge’s initial 511 million gallon dewatering request to build the entire pipeline.
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Enbridge work crews officially finished building the new Line 3 tar sands pipeline across northern Minnesota in late September, 2021. The last section completed ran through the Walker Brook valley, a forested peat bog in Clearwater County.
Less than a year later, work crews returned to Walker Brook to fix problems created by this ill-considered and poorly permitted project.
State regulators haven’t talked about problems at Walker Brook publicly. Members of the public don’t know how many other Line 3/93 construction damage sites exist that they haven’t been told about. (Regulators don’t talk about them until they have been investigated and, if appropriate, levied fines, which leaves the public in the dark for long periods of time.)
I wouldn’t have known about the problems at Walker Brook but for friends who volunteer with a group called Waadookawaad Amikwag (Anishinaabemowin for Those who help beaver). They coordinate with drone pilots who monitor the Line 3/93 corridor looking for potential trouble spots. When problem areas are identified, volunteers go in on foot for a first-hand look.
On a recent Sunday, I joined my friends in what they call a “ground truthing” of the Walker Brook site.
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