Enbridge Line 5: A clear and present danger
Anti-Line 5 graffiti at Enbridge's pumping station in Mackinaw City, Mich. (Laina G. Stebbins | Michigan Advance)
Canadian energy company Enbridge's Line 5 traverses an extremely sensitive ecological area across northern Wisconsin, 400 rivers and streams as well as a myriad of wetlands, in addition to a path under the Mackinac Straights between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, all the while skirting the southern shore of Lake Superior. Such close proximity to the Great Lakes, lakes that hold over 20% of the world's fresh surface water, lakes that supply drinking water to nearly 40 million people, yes, that does indeed make Line 5 a ticking time bomb.
Northern Wisconsin is also a very culturally sensitive area, home to the Bad River Reservation. The Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa were guaranteed rights to their lands by an 1854 treaty with the U.S. government. The easements for Line 5 across the reservation, granted to Enbridge by the Chippewa, expired in 2013 and the Bad River Band chose not to renew them. Enbridge continues to operate the line, illegally and in direct violation of the Bad River Band's right to sovereignty over their land.
The Bad River Band has a guaranteed legal right to their land. They also have a right to Food Sovereignty, the internationally recognized right of food providers to have control over their land, seeds and water while rejecting the privatization of natural resources. Line 5 clearly impinges on the Band's right to hunt, fish, harvest wild rice, to farm and have access to safe drinking water.
A federal court ruled that Enbridge has been trespassing on lands of the Bad River Band since 2013 and ordered the company to cease operations of Line 5 by June of 2026 (seems that immediate cessation would make more sense), but rather than shut down the aging line, Enbridge plans to build a diversion around the Bad River Reservation. They plan to move the pipeline out of the Bad River Band's front yard into their back yard, leaving 100% of the threats to people and the environment in place.
Liquid petroleum (crude oil, natural gas and petroleum product) pipelines are big business in the U.S. With 2.6 million miles of oil and gas pipelines, the U.S. network is the largest in the world. If we continue our heavy and growing dependence on liquid fossil fuels, we must realize that we will continue to negatively impact the climate and the lives of everyone on the planet.
Instead of moving to a just transition away from fossil fuels, liquid or otherwise, the government continues to subsidize the industry through direct payments and tax breaks, refusing to acknowledge the cost of pollution-related health problems and environmental damage, a cost which is of course, incalculable.
There are nearly 20,000 miles of pipelines planned or currently under construction in the U.S., thus it would appear that government and private industry are in no hurry to break that addiction, much less make a just transition. While no previous administration was in any hurry to break with the fossil fuel industry, they at least gave the illusion of championing a transition to cleaner energy.
The current administration is abundantly clear. Their strategy is having no strategy. They don't like wind and solar and they plan to end any support for renewable energy. They don't care if they upend global markets, banking, energy companies or certainly any efforts to help developing countries transition away from fossil fuels.
Pipelines are everywhere across the U.S., a spiderweb connecting wells, refineries, transportation and distribution centers. The vast majority of pipelines are buried and many, if not all, at some point cross streams, rivers, lakes and run over aquifers. Pipeline ruptures and other assorted failures will continue and spillage will find its way into the bodies of water they skirt around or pass under. It's not a question if they will leak, but when.
Enbridge controls the largest network of petroleum pipelines in the Great Lakes states, and they are hardly immune to spills. Between 1999 and 2013 it was reported that Enbridge had over 1,000 spills dumping a reported 7.4 million gallons of oil.
In 2010 Enbridge's Line 6B ruptured and contaminated the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history. Over 1.2 million gallons of oil were recovered from the river between 2010 and 2014. How much went downstream or was buried in sediment, we'll never know.
In 2024 a fault in Enbridge Line 6 caused a spill of 70 thousand gallons near Cambridge Wisconsin. And Enbridge's most infamous pipeline, the 71-year-old Line 5 from Superior Wisconsin to Sarnia Ontario, has had 29 spills in the last 50 years, loosing over 1 million gallons of oil.
Some consider Line 5 to be a 'public good' because, as Enbridge argues, shutting the line down will shut down the U.S. economy and people will not be able to afford to heat their homes — claims they have never supported with any evidence. A public good is one that everyone can use, that everyone can benefit from. A public good is not, as Enbridge apparently believes, a mechanism for corporate profit.
Line 5 is a privately owned property, existing only to generate profits for Enbridge. If it were a public good, Enbridge would certainly be giving more attention to the rights of the Bad River Band, the well-being of all the people who depend on the clean waters of the Great Lakes and to protecting the sensitive environment of northern Wisconsin and Michigan. They are not. Their trespassing, their disregard for the environment, their continuing legal efforts to protect their bottom line above all else, only points to their self-serving avarice.
The Bad River Band wants Enbridge out, and in their eyes it is not a case of 'not in my back yard' they do not want Line 5 in anyone's back yard.
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