It’s Complicated.
This is the pipeline about which the Anti-Racism Team and the Earth Justice Ministry showed the film Bad River last Fall (photo above). The Bad River Tribe is fighting Enbridge’s re-route of the line to go around their reservation. Enbridge’s pipeline had been trespassing on their land for several years, after their permit had expired.
On Friday, February 28, an administrative law judge extended the stay on construction for the reroute in Northern Wisconsin. Good news, yet . . .
On April 16, Reuters reported that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers granted national energy emergency status for a tunnel proposed by Enbridge for its Line 5 oil pipeline on Wednesday, fast-tracking a key federal permitting process. The pipeline tunnel is among the first to get an emergency designation after President Trump declared a national energy emergency.
The project would build a roughly 4-mile tunnel for Line 5 crossing through the Straits of Mackinac in the Great Lakes. The pipeline carries over 20 million gallons of oil and natural gas liquids daily from Superior, Wisconsin to Sarnia, Ontario.
Native tribes and environmental groups oppose the project because of the potential risk to the Great Lakes and have refuted the idea that the tunnel is needed and that a national energy emergency exists.
The draft environmental impact study is slated for release by June.
Terry Wiggins, Co-Chair, Earth Justice Ministry