Intervenors seek jail time for Enbridge execs for failure to remain ‘law abiding’

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.”

The backstory on Line 3’s aquifer breaches

It’s about sheet pilings and a failed regulatory system

Sheet pilings laid out at a Line 3 worksite, June, 2021.

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.”

Enbridge Line 3’s aquifer breaches: A summary

Last updated: Aug. 8, 2023

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.

Seems like Enbridge pays more for PR writers than environmental protection

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.

We’re getting a slow drip of information on serious construction damage from Enbridge’s tar sands pipeline

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.

Walker Brook shows we still don’t know the extent of Enbridge Line 3’s construction damage

Waadookawaad Amikwag is working to find out

Screen grab from a Waadookawaad Amikwag 2022 video. The wood-plank road allowed Enbridge to bring heavy equipment into a wetland.

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.

Drone footage reveals more Line 3 construction damage, water protectors again seek federal intervention

Today, on the one-year anniversary of oil flowing through Enbridge’s new Line 3 tar sands pipeline, Honor the Earth has released a video showing the extent of unreported construction damage.

“We are only beginning to understand the extent of Enbridge’s damage to our fragile fresh water systems – compounded by their botched attempts to fix it,” Honor the Earth said in a media release.

“Minnesota state agencies have not done enough to keep the public informed or ensure our water is safe. Instead, state regulators have continued protecting the Canadian multinational. But the new video evidence says it all: Enbridge has done even more damage than previously known, and they don’t know how to fix it. They must be held accountable and stopped.”