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enbridge
Line 5 Poses Catastrophic Risks—It’s Past Time President Biden Shut It Down
The president has a choice: side with local leaders working to protect their water and communities or side with a foreign company looking to increase their profits.
Jan 10, 2024
Any day now, the Biden administration could weigh in on the future of the most dangerous, outdated, and unnecessary oil pipeline in the country. We don’t need to wait for a lengthy legal process to play out while this ticking time bomb puts us at risk. President Biden can decommission and shut down Line 5, an aging oil pipeline running through the Great Lakes, by revoking its presidential permit before it’s too late.
Line 5 is owned by the Canadian company Enbridge, the biggest of Big Oil transporters. As a shortcut to get its oil to a Canadian refinery in Sarnia, Ontario—which receives 95% of the product—Line 5 cuts through Wisconsin and Michigan. While the Canadian government has protected the oil industry and Enbridge, the Biden Administration has the opportunity to side with the people of Michigan and Wisconsin instead of Big Oil.
Along its 645-mile route, Line 5 has failed 33 times already, spilling at least 1.1 million gallons of oil since 1968. Despite the risks and Enbridge’s historic failures as a pipeline operator, the Biden Administration, under pressure from Canada, has been silent on Line 5’s future. The pipeline continues to illegally operate through the Bad River Band's land in northern Wisconsin and the Straits of Mackinac in Michigan.
Line 5 is dubious engineering and a bad investment for Michigan and Wisconsin, built across the most vulnerable site for an oil spill in the entire Great Lakes watershed.
Canada’s government is lobbying the Biden Administration to keep the aging Line 5 operational, but local leaders have long called for it to be shut down. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed a lawsuit to shut Line 5 down because it runs through the Straits of Mackinac, threatening the world’s greatest freshwater source. Meanwhile, a federal judge in Wisconsin sided with the Bad River Band and ordered the pipeline off tribal lands where Line 5 trespasses through a sensitive tribal watershed. President Biden has a choice: side with local leaders working to protect their water and communities or side with a foreign company looking to increase their profits.
Communities and leaders are calling for Line 5 to be shut down, which can be done without raising prices at the pump. Rather than respect the law, Enbridge has proposed work around schemes that would continue to put communities at risk.
The Bad River Band tribe has demanded that Line 5 get off their land and out of their watershed—yet the pipeline remains upstream and still puts the tribe at risk. Instead of complying with the tribe’s demand, Enbridge proposes building a reroute that skirts the entire reservation. While the reroute would no longer cross through tribal land, it would be located upstream of the reservation, keeping the Tribal Community in harm’s way of future spills.
Enbridge has proposed the Great Lakes Tunnel Project to house the new Line 5 pipeline. It would be a concrete tunnel, 21 feet in diameter, that runs under the Straits of Mackinac. This is dubious engineering and a bad investment for Michigan and Wisconsin, built across the most vulnerable site for an oil spill in the entire Great Lakes watershed.
It’s clear that Enbridge is a bad actor that can’t be trusted, and has a terrible safety record of oil pipeline disasters. In addition to the 1.1 million gallons of toxic oil Line 5 has already spilled, Enbridge’s other disastrous tar sands pipeline, Line 3, ruptured four aquifers in northern Minnesota during construction alone, which Enbridge touts as the safest construction possible. In its Line 5 maintenance—or lack thereof—Enbridge has violated pipeline support standards and numerous other legal doctrines that protect us and our shared natural resources from the dangers of oil spills. In its 70 years of operating Line 5, Enbridge has demonstrated countless times that it simply doesn’t care about its repeated violations and instead would rather prioritize their profits than abiding by the law and protecting our communities.
There is no justification to keep Line 5 operating or extend its life when science—and the Biden administration’s own stated commitment to climate action require us to rapidly transition away from fossil fuels. President Biden must step up and use his presidential authority to force Line 5 to shut down. It’s either us, the people who live in the Great Lakes region, or Big Oil.
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'Disastrous': Michigan Regulators Approve Enbridge Line 5 Expansion
"Today's decision is another notch in a long history of ignoring the rights of tribal nations," said one Indigenous leader.
Dec 01, 2023
Days after climate advocates applauded Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's signing of a package of clean energy bills that one campaigner said would "translate into better air, water, and health for everyone," state regulators took several steps back from a sustainable future as they approved a key permit for Enbridge's Line 5 expansion project beneath the Great Lakes.
In a 2-0 vote with one member abstaining, the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) approved siting for the project, granting Canadian oil firm Enbridge permission to build a concrete tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac—which connect Lake Michigan and Lake Huron—to house a four-mile section of its 645-mile petroleum pipeline.
The company can't break ground on the project without approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which isn't expected to announce its decision until 2026, but Indigenous tribes and advocacy groups that have fought for years to stop the pipeline from being built expressed outrage that the commission approved the permit despite well-documented objections.
All federally recognized tribes in Michigan have passed resolutions opposing Line 5, which safety experts have warned puts the Great Lakes at risk for a massive explosion and oil spill.
"Today's decision is another notch in a long history of ignoring the rights of tribal nations," said Whitney Gravelle, president of the Bay Mills Indian Community. "We must act now to protect the peoples of the Great Lakes from an oil spill, to lead our communities out of the fossil fuel era, and to preserve the shared lands and waters in Michigan for all of us."
Tribes have said the project would violate their treaty rights and that Enbridge has not proven it can operate the tunnel safely. The company's Line 6B oil spill in 2010 contaminated nearly 40 miles of the Kalamazoo River.
"Disappointment isn't a big enough word," Rebecca Liebing, attorney for Bay Mills, told Michigan Bridge after the MPSC vote was announced. "There's no ambiguity regarding how the tribes feel about this matter... We're not done fighting."
The lakes hold 84% of North America's surface freshwater, and the Line 5 expansion would be the largest underwater hazardous liquids tunnel ever completed, said the coalition Oil and Water Don't Mix (OWDM).
"With this action, the Michigan Public Service Commission is putting Michigan in uncharted, dangerous territory while ignoring warnings by independent industry experts who testified during the MPSC's proceedings," said Sean McBrearty, a campaign coordinator for OWDM. "Never before has an oil tunnel that also carries other hazardous liquids been built in one of the most ecologically sensitive spots on Earth."
McBrearty pointed out that Enbridge already operates other oil pipelines in the Straits of Mackinac, and said there is "an open question whether Enbridge intends to build the tunnel or is simply using the project as a diversion and delay from shutting down the existing twin oil pipelines."
"Moreover, the Line 5 tunnel will worsen the impacts of the climate crisis by adding 27 million metric tons of polluting and climate altering carbon into the atmosphere, equivalent to 10 coal-fired power plants," said McBrearty, calling on President Joe Biden to revoke the presidential permit for Line 5.
Whitmer campaigned on closing down Line 5, but Enbridge has claimed the governor has no authority to shut down its pipelines because it runs between the U.S. and Canada and is subject to federal regulations.
A spokesperson for the governor toldMichigan Bridge that Whitmer is reviewing the MPSC's decision and that her goal "has always been getting the pipelines out of the water as quickly as possible."
Christopher Clark, senior attorney for Earthjustice, which represented Bay Mills as it presented its case objecting to Line 5 to the MPSC, said the commission ignored "the concerns of tribal communities in favor of the profit of a fossil fuel company."
"The evidence before the commission demonstrated that the proposed tunnel would put the Great Lakes region at serious risk and profoundly endanger the identity and lifeways of the Bay Mills Indian Community, a sovereign tribal nation whose relationship to these waters preexists the United States," said Clark. "We will use every open avenue to shut down Line 5 in order to avert an environmental catastrophe and slow the unthinkable impacts of climate change.”Keep ReadingShow Less
US Judge Orders Stretch of Enbridge Line 5 Shut Down on Tribal Land
"But for the theft of Indigenous lands," said environmental activist and attorney Steven Donziger, "this pipeline would not even exist."
Jun 19, 2023
The Canadian oil company Enbridge has been ordered to pay the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa $5 million in damages for trespassing and to gradually shut down part of its Line 5 pipeline in Wisconsin after a federal judge found that the company has placed the tribe's sacred land at risk of an environmental disaster.
U.S. District Judge William Conley of the Western District of Wisconsin handed down the ruling on Friday after the Bad River Band argued in court that there are now fewer than 15 feet between parts of Line 5 and the Bad River following the partial erosion of the riverbank in recent months.
The tribe said its land is in imminent danger of a potential pipeline rupture as roughly 12 miles of Line 5 run through the Bad River Band's reservation, carrying up to 23 million gallons of oil and liquefied natural gas each day through Michigan and Wisconsin to Ontario.
Line 5 has been the site of about 30 oil spills in its 70-year history, and another of Enbridge's pipelines ruptured in 2010, spilling more than 840,000 gallons of oil into a creek and the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.
"Tribal sovereignty prevailed over corporate profits."
In addition to ordering Enbridge to pay the tribe, Conley on Friday gave the company three years to wind down its operations on the Bad River Band's land, ordering it to "cease operation of Line 5 on any parcel within the band's tribal territory on which defendants lack a valid right of way and to arrange reasonable remediation at those sites."
The judge denied, however, that the pipeline's presence has put the tribe in imminent danger. He said an oil spill "would unquestionably be a public nuisance" but claimed an immediate shutdown of a portion of the pipeline would disrupt energy security and cause fuel costs to soar for locals.
Bad River Band Chairman Mike Wiggins said the tribe does not see the ruling as "cause for unqualified celebration" but expressed appreciation for the judge "putting an end to Enbridge's flagrant trespass and disregard for our rights."
"Tribal sovereignty prevailed over corporate profits," Wiggins said, adding that the tribe expects Enbridge "to fight this order with all of their corporate might."
"We are under no illusion that Enbridge will do the right thing," he added.
Enbridge said over the weekend that it plans to appeal the ruling.
Erick Arnold, an attorney for the Bad River Band, said the three-year timeline leaves the tribe "vulnerable to catastrophe."
"While the band's motivations have never been about money," said Arnold, "such a small award for a decadelong trespass during which Enbridge earned over a billion dollars in net profits from Line 5 will not sufficiently deter trespassers like Enbridge, but will instead create an incentive for corporations to violate the sovereignty of the band."
Environmental lawyer and activist Steven Donziger called the order a "victory" overall.
"But for the theft of Indigenous lands," he said, "this pipeline would not even exist."
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