Native Nations and environmental groups opposed to the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline announced Wednesday they would appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court to overturn the pipeline’s Certificate of Need and Route Permit. One notable advocate that had sued to stop Line 3 dropped out this time: The Minnesota Department of Commerce. Commerce represented the public interest before the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC). It has consistently argued that Enbridge failed to prove that future oil demand justified building the new and larger Line 3.
On Saturday I visited the site of two things. One was a construction site – the Canadian company Enbridge is building a pipeline to carry tar-sands oil, a filthy energy-producing sludge, from it’s home in Alberta, through Minnesota and ending at Lake Superior, so that it can be shipped overseas. The construction (destruction) has leveled pristine wilderness, will cross through 200 bodies of water, and as soon as the weather warms there will be drilling under the Mississippi at two points in Minnesota to lay the pipe.
On January 2, 2021, during the first weekend of the New Year, dozens of water protectors gathered to demonstrate and pray along Great River Road near Palisade, Minnesota. They joined in song, protesting a controversial tar sands oil pipeline called Line 3, which is currently being constructed through northern Minnesota and traditional Anishinaabe lands. Ojibwe tribes have helped spearhead the opposition to this pipeline, alongside Indigenous and environmental groups.
Nearly two dozen protesters were arrested at an Enbridge Line 3 pipeline construction site in Aitkin County near the Mississippi River on Monday after they blocked equipment and refused orders to disperse, Sheriff Dan Guida said.