Take a stand against the planet-threatening Line 3 pipeline

As we will outline below, Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline is unneeded and an environmental disaster in the making. It unnecessarily contributes to our climate emergency, violates Indigenous lands and treaties, and puts local people at risk of COVID-19 and worse, considering the history of missing and murdered Indigenous women correlated with the “man camps.” We implore Teresa Madden, a Boulder resident and Enbridge board member, to stand with local Indigenous and environmental activists, expressing her dissent to the board of the Enbridge corporation.

To begin with the immediate cost to human life: Indigenous communities are already being disproportionately affected by COVID-19, and the construction of Line 3 will put more than 4,000 Enbridge workers, many from out of state, living and working in close quarters; this has the potential to develop into a superspreader event. Additionally, 1 in 3 Indigenous women is sexually assaulted during their life and 67% of these assaults are perpetrated by non-Indigenous people. The link between extractive industries and sex-trafficking is well documented. For example, man camp establishments near oil extraction sites and along pipelines are strongly correlated with an increased number of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Pipelines also coincide with higher rates of human trafficking, domestic violence, drug and alcohol use, toxin exposures, and other societal stressors. The statistics are staggering and the links of violence to extractive industries are well established. Shouldn’t we do everything in our power to put an end to this violence?

This is a risky enterprise on other fronts as well. Enbridge has a history of pipeline leaks, a disregard for agreements, and is in financial danger with the current low oil prices. The existing Line 3 Enbridge pipeline transports tar sands crude oil from Alberta, Canada, to Superior, Wisconsin, spanning northern Minnesota and crossing the Leech Lake and Fond du Lac reservations, and the 1855, 1854 and 1842 treaty areas. In operation since 1968, it has had a number of leaks. One of those leaks was the largest inland oil spill in the United States: In 1991, 1.7 million gallons spilled in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.

Enbridge was also responsible for another of the largest oil spills in U.S. history, near Marshall, Michigan, in 2010. In 2016, Enbridge reached a $177-million settlement with the U.S Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency over this spill and another, in Romeoville, Illinois. In November, Enbridge received notice from the state of Michigan that a 1953 easement allowing it to operate dual pipelines is being revoked and terminated, “based on Enbridge’s persistent and incurable violations of the easement’s terms and conditions.”

Read more: https://coloradonewsline.com/2021/02/02/take-a-stand-against-the-planet-threatening-line-3-pipeline/