A possible rerouting of 12 miles of Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline has Indigenous communities outraged over the havoc the proposed 41-mile part may wreak on the setting. Leaders from 9 Indigenous teams—all girls—submitted a 22-page letter final month calling on businesses just like the Military Corps of Engineers to reject permits for the undertaking, citing Enbridge’s troubling historical past of violations. The leaders supplied concrete examples of how the corporate has constantly prioritized fossil fuels over the neighborhood it claims to serve.
“Enbridge proposes utilizing horizontal directional drilling (HDD) beneath 14 rivers that circulate into the Unhealthy River Reservation, together with the White, Marengo, and Unhealthy Rivers,” they defined, citing Enbridge’s personal proposal to make manner for the pipeline. “In Minnesota, Enbridge’s HDD practices resulted in frac-outs at 28 websites alongside Line 3’s route,” the letter continues.
“This happens when the drilling mud is pressured exterior of the boring tunnel and enters groundwater, at instances reaching the floor. The corporate polluted floor water at 63% of HDD websites, together with on the Mississippi headwaters, and launched an undisclosed quantity of drilling fluid into aquifers. Line 3 building staff additionally violated permits once they breached at the least three artesian aquifers, releasing 280 million gallons of groundwater.”
With the neighborhood involved over the greater than 900 waterways upstream that might be impacted by the reroute, leaders are understandably calling Enbridge’s plans “an act of cultural genocide.”
