Bad River: Enbridge’s reroute

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NATIONAL NATIVE NEWS:

A post marks where Enbridge’s Line 5 crosses the reservation of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa on Friday, June 24, 2022. (Photo: Danielle Kaeding / WPR)

After securing key state permits, hurdles remain for a Canadian energy firm’s plan to reroute an oil and gas pipeline around the Bad River tribe’s reservation in Wisconsin.

As Danielle Kaeding reports, that includes renewed calls from tribal leaders to shut down Enbridge’s Line 5.

Bad River Tribal Vice Chair Patrick Bigboy says he’s shocked and upset with the state’s decision to grant permits for Enbridge’s reroute.

The company proposed a new 41-mile segment around the tribe’s reservation after the band sued the company to shut down and remove Line 5 from its lands. Bigboy says he wants the pipeline completely out of the Bad River watershed.

“It’s now at the headwaters, which compromises more of the reservation and the waterways, wetlands, all the things that are in line with the river and the flow of the water.”

Bigboy says the federal government should uphold the tribe’s treaty rights and water quality standards and deny federal approval of the project.

Enbridge’s Midwest operations director Paul Eberth says federal regulators will determine if its reroute poses impacts downstream.

“We expect to be able to, like we did with the state, meet the conditions in order to be able to secure a permit.”

An attorney for the tribe says they’re evaluating next steps for a legal challenge.

Low-Flying DHS Helicopter Showers Anti-Pipeline Protests With Debris #Line3

DHS/Border Patrol is using helicopter rotor wash to try to clear out activists out from an occupied #Line3 pump station north of Park Rapids. More than 24 activists are locked down to equipment inside. @MPRnews pic.twitter.com/ArTN6FAqwC

— Evan Frost (@efrostee) June 7, 2021

Cutting seems to ceased for now pic.twitter.com/UOoeHmHAwJ

— Evan Frost (@efrostee) June 8, 2021

 

Authorities said the risky low-flying maneuver was used to warn demonstrators to disperse, but the reasoning doesn’t hold up.

The largest civil disobedience yet against new pipeline construction in Minnesota was met by a furious response — and a cloud of debris. A Department of Homeland Security Border Patrol helicopter descended on the protest against the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline, kicking up dust and showering demonstrators with sand, in an unusual attempt to disperse the crowd.

“I couldn’t see because it got in my eyes,” said Big Wind, a 28-year-old Northern Arapaho organizer with the anti-pipeline Giniw Collective, who was there when the helicopter swooped over the civil disobedience action. “After it pulled up there were a lot of people who were ducking, who were in the fetal position, just because they didn’t know what was going to happen and were trying to protect themselves from the sand.”

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The anti-pipeline protests are in response to plans from the Canadian energy firm Enbridge to ramp up construction as a springtime hiatus lifts. Enbridge is preparing to drill under northern Minnesota rivers that are central to the lifeways of local Ojibwe people — and are protected by treaties between tribes and the federal government. Pipeline opponents have for weeks asserted that this weekend’s Treaty People Gathering would draw more than 1,000 people to northern Minnesota to fight the tar sands pipeline.

BIG READ: Low-Flying DHS Helicopter Showers Anti-Pipeline Protests With Debris

 

 

Here’s the story from @dan_kraker and I about everything that happened at the #Line3 pump station yesterday. Listen for it on Morning Edition too https://t.co/cVNjH1U5E9

— Evan Frost (@efrostee) June 8, 2021