TL/DR –
Lake Superior’s Bad River wetlands are sacred and stunning, but definitely not the place for a 71-year-old oil pipeline spilling its guts. The Bad River tribe isn’t playing around with Enbridge’s Line 5 — it’s old, risky, and creeping closer to disaster with every storm, so the tribe’s fighting for its removal and won’t be bought. Despite Enbridge’s big bucks offer and their “safety first” script, the tribe’s message is crystal clear: their homeland, culture, and way of life aren’t for sale.
“This is a power place,” he said. “It’s just no place for an oil pipeline.”
It has one, though. Seventy-one years ago, Lakehead Pipeline, a predecessor to Canadian pipeline company Enbridge, built Line 5, a 30-inch crude oil pipeline transporting up to 540,000 barrels of hydrocarbons daily from Superior, Wisconsin to Sarnia, Ontario. The 645-mile line crosses the Bad River reservation, which is rich in forests, river crossings, and wetlands.
Any spill from the pipeline could contaminate the Bad River and Kakagon Sloughs, known as the “Everglades of the North.”
The path through the reservation was initially approved by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. However, more than a dozen easements granted to the pipeline, completed in 1953, have since expired.
In 2017, the Bad River tribal council voted unanimously not to renew them. Two years later, the tribe sued to have the pipeline removed from the reservation. The ongoing legal battle was chronicled in Bad River, a recent documentary.
In 2023, Judge William Conley of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin ruled in favor of the tribe, giving Enbridge three years to stop pumping oil through the reservation. The pipeline company has appealed the ruling.
A major concern for the tribe is “the meander,” a naturally occurring bend in the Bad River that is eroding a riverbank near Line 5’s route.
In 1963, the pipe was 320 feet from the river’s edge. By 2015, the distance had narrowed to around 80 feet. Recent storms have reduced the gap to within 11 feet.
“It’s an accident waiting to happen,” Robert Blanchard, chairman of the Bad River tribe, said of the meander. Blanchard, who will turn 70 later this month, is one year younger than Line 5.
“I know how I feel when I wake up in the morning and my bones creak,” he said. “You can’t tell me that it’s like it was when it was first put in. It deteriorates.”
Original Story at insideclimatenews.org
