What Is Line Three?
The “Stop Line Three” movement has gone semi-viral throughout social media, and many are wondering what the phrase means. Line Three is a part of Enbridge’s Mainline System that transports crude oil from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada to Superior, Wisconsin. The pipeline has degraded over the years, becoming dangerous to wildlife and citizens. Line Three, which was originally built in the 1960s, is a 1,097-mile crude oil pipeline. Throughout the 75 years it's been built, the pipeline has strayed from Enbridge’s safety standards. Because of this, Enbridge came up with a replacement plan to get rid of the 34-inch diameter pipeline and replace it with a new 36-inch diameter pipeline along a similar route.
One of the benefits of Line Three is that it creates more jobs. Approximately 8,600 jobs throughout the System and 6,500 are expected to be filled locally over two years. More crude oil means more petroleum, which is a necessity to fuel cars, and aid hospitals, schools, and more. It also will mean more support for local Minnesota refineries. Enbridge states on their website that Line Three is an essential part of Minnesota and the crude oil industry. Minnesota needs Line Three because the crude oil is needed by residents and refiners alike.
Greenpeace, an international network of independent organizations, released a report in November 2018 about Enbridge’s pipelines. Greenpeace spoke about Enbridge’s history of pipeline spills and they said that Enbridge, “has a long track record of pipeline spills, both chronic small spills and large catastrophes.” They further looked into this by examining the 2010 6B pipeline spill of 840,000 gallons of tar sands into the Kalamazoo River, in Michigan. Greenpeace also stated in their report that the pipelines put Minnesotan ecosystems, water, treaty rights, and communities at risk. Data gathered from the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA) has shown that “the U.S. portion of the pipeline network owned by Enbridge, its joint ventures, and subsidiaries suffered 307 hazardous liquids incidents from 2002 to August 2018 -- around one spill every 20 days on average.”
Another reason why people do not support Enbridge and the expansion of Line 3 is that the pipeline would violate the treaty rights of the Anishinaabe people (otherwise known as Ojibwe and Chippewa). The Anishinaabe people living in the Minnesota Territory have made multiple treaties with the U.S. government throughout the 1800s. The Treaty of 1855 ceded a lot of Anishinaabe lands in most northern parts of Minnesota. The Treaty of 1837 stated that “the privilege of hunting, fishing, and gathering the wild rice, upon the lands, the rivers and the lakes included in the territory ceded, is guaranteed to the Indians ...” (The 1999 U.S. Supreme Court decision Minnesota vs. Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians affirmed that the hunting, fishing and gathering rights also applied to the 1855 Treaty.) Information gathered by the Sierra Club North Star Chapter.
Honor the Earth, an organization that advocates for Indigenous Environmental Issues, also has a statement about the pipeline and the Anishinaabe land- “All pipelines leak, and catastrophes like Enbridge’s one million gallon spill in 2010 on the Kalamazoo River are not unlikely. The pipelines threaten the culture, way of life, and physical survival of the Ojibwe people. Where there is wild rice, there is Anishinaabe, and where it is Anishinaabe, there is wild rice. It is our sacred food. Without it, we will die. It is that simple.”
Winona LaDuke, an Ojibwa leader and one of the founders of Honor the Earth, was recently arrested on the frontlines of the protests. When asked about this experience, she said: “over 600 people have been arrested. If [the pipeline] is such a good idea, why have so many people been arrested?” Later, she mentions how Line Three is “even worse” than Keystone (a pipeline that Biden shut down) when it comes to climate. While explaining why it’s important for President Biden to look at this as a climate issue, Winona LaDuke says that“we expect [Harris] and Biden to provide leadership for a just transition, not to be basically prostituting for the Canadian pipeline industry. This is a really bad pipeline that runs through the heart of Ojibwe country in the middle of a time when the planet is on fire. This is not a good pipeline. In fact, there’s no more good tar sand pipelines.”
Will Line 3 harm the Anishinaabe people and other indigenous groups near the pipeline and other pipelines? Yes. In recent years, Native communities have reported that the rates of human trafficking, sex trafficking, and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) have increased in the areas where the oil companies set up “man camps”. These “man camps'' strain infrastructures in communities that already don’t have adequate resources to support population booms. Police reports have shown that the potential harm from “man camps'' is exacerbated when they are encroaching on or near indigenous people’s lands. The Anishinaabe people deserve their clean water and land, but we also need crude oil to function in society. In 40 years, will we regret the expansion of Line Three?
By Caroline Lackey