“It’s Going To Spill”
Pieces of the Line 3 pipeline being prepped for construction. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)
On the ground with water protectors fighting the construction of the Line 3 tar sands pipeline in Minnesota.
by JULIA ROCK
The Shell River, named for the clams and mussels lining its riverbed, was only a few inches deep where it abutted the Central Minnesota encampment where Dawn Kier and her colleagues were living. From Kier’s perch in a lawn chair near the water on a recent late-summer evening, the river looked calm as it flowed past swaying cattails and thin stands of wild rice nearly ripe enough for harvest. But Kier had a keen knowledge of the complexity beneath the surface.
“There’s this whole water system underneath the riverbed,” Kier explained, as dusk enveloped the canopy of pine trees overhead. “And there are cracks and fissions where the water comes up to the surface.” She worried about what else might be seeping through those cracks, thanks to the construction of the Line 3 pipeline through the region by a Canadian oil company called Enbridge.
“Enbridge drills so far under the water that they risk hitting the aquifers,” Kier said, referring to a spill of drilling fluids known as a frac-out. Such frac-outs have released thousands of gallons of drilling fluids in the region this summer, which can disrupt ecosystems, including suffocating mussels and fish.
Kier has watched water levels in the river, which eventually flows into the Mississippi, fall as much as six inches in a single day as, amid a historic drought, Enbridge drained billions of gallons of water from the tributary to lay pipes under the riverbed.
Kier, an Anishinaabe woman in her late 40s and citizen of White Earth Nation, is living here to protect the region from further harm. (The Anishinaabe are a group of people indigenous to the Great Lakes region in the present-day United States and Canada.) She has been running an encampment here all summer, one of six Indigenous-led camps for people who call themselves water protectors and have been trying to stop construction of Enbridge’s tar sands pipeline.
Line 3, Enbridge’s largest ever project and part of North America’s longest pipeline, zigzags nearly 350 miles across Minnesota and through more than 200 bodies of water. Construction on the project, a rerouting and expansion of an old pipeline, began last December.
Water protectors had high hopes that after a campaign promising to fight climate change, President Joe Biden would revoke permits for the pipeline, but instead, his administration defended the Trump administration’s approval in federal court.
Now the project is more than 90 percent complete — and if finished, it will carry nearly one million barrels of oil each day from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to a terminal in Superior, Wisconsin, on the shore of the eponymous Great Lake. That is enough to almost entirely replace the lost supply caused by Biden’s much-vaunted cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline in January.
Enbridge’s new pipeline is projected to emit the carbon dioxide equivalent of 50 new coal plants, greater than the sum of all other emissions in the state of Minnesota combined.
In a region that has been dependent on extractive economies like iron mining and logging since white settlers began colonizing the area in the 19th century, this is far from the first time the Anishinaabe people have had to protect themselves and the land from threat. Already this summer, commercial agriculture operations, which use local waterways for irrigation, and a drought caused by climate change had made lakes and rivers which usually grow wild rice inhospitable for the plant which is at the center of economic and spiritual life for the Anishinaabe people.
Enbridge’s success so far in pushing the project through — even as Democrats hold the governorship and half the legislature in Minnesota as well as governing majorities at the federal level — shows that the party is not yet willing to take on the fossil fuel industry. Despite dire warnings from scientists that most fossil fuels must be left in the ground to avert the worst impacts of climate change, the pipeline, which will transport the dirtiest fossil fuel, has the backing of politicians from both parties, environmental regulators, and local law enforcement.
Still, water protectors continue to mount a massive resistance — filing lawsuits, coordinating with environmental groups, pushing to elect supportive politicians, and orchestrating dozens of nonviolent direct actions. Since construction began last December, over 900 people have been arrested protesting Line 3. Now, more than two dozen congressional Democrats have joined the call to cancel the project, and earlier this month, several of the progressive House Democrats known as “the squad” visited Minnesota to personally voice their opposition.
Such efforts are putting pressure on Biden and the Democratic Party to take the most consequential and needed step to tackle climate change: Stopping new fossil fuel development.
But even if Line 3 becomes operable, water protectors intend to sustain what they’ve built for as long as it takes to turn the tide against Enbridge and the fossil fuel industry.
“You can live without oil,” said Kier, gesturing to the assemblage of tents and teepees around her, “But you can’t live without water.”
As Kier was talking, her 10-year-old son interrupted her, shrieking he’d been stung by a bee. “I’m dying!” he cried melodramatically.
“No you’re not, I promise,” said Kier, laughing, explaining that just like everything else around here, the insects are angry because they don’t have enough water.
“The bees are thirsty,” she said. “Everybody’s dying of thirst right now.”