To Sadie Paradise, Enbridge’s Line Five is very special.
She grew up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and was raised by a Line Five pipe liner.
Line 5 provided her father with a career that allowed her and her brothers to grow up comfortably in a heated home and attend a heated school.
Paradise now resides in Wisconsin and serves as the community engagement advisor the Canadian-based oil giant that is seeking a permit to reroute a section of the pipeline around a local tribe. She was one of 130 people who registered to voice an opinion on the project during Tuesday’s public hearing hosted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The Corps is analyzing Enbridge’s application for a permit under the Clean Water Act and has completed a draft assessment of the $450 million project. The Corps also regulates construction on federal waters included in the project and Enbridge’s intent to drill under the White River. However, the Corps will not regulate the overall construction or operation of the pipeline.
The 645-mile long oil/natural gas pipeline starts in Superior, runs through northern Wisconsin and Michigan, and terminates near Sarnia, Canada. Within Ashland County, the existing Line 5 pipeline crosses through 12 miles of the Bad River Reservation. In 2019, the Bad River tribe filed a federal lawsuit to require Enbridge remove Line 5 from their reservation.
In September 2022, a federal judge ruled that Enbridge is illegally trespassing on the Bad River Reservation. In June 2023, U.S. District Judge William Conley ordered Enbridge to cease operating Line 5 on the Reservation entirely by June
2026. Conley’s shutdown order is currently on appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Enbridge has been working since 2020 to receive federal and state permits to do so. The draft reroute would redirect Line 5 around the boundaries of the reservation and replace approximately 20 miles of the existing Line 5 pipeline with a 41-mile new segment located entirely outside the boundaries of the reservation. If the project is approved, construction is expected to last about a year.
Paradise, an Enbridge employee, said she understands “the level of safety and commitment Enbridge has to the environment, our community and our people.”
Paradise’s view of the pipeline isn’t universal.
Sandra Gokee, of Ashland, said the pipeline puts her children and their children at risk. Enbridge has proved that it’s not very good at installing pipelines based on the reroute of Line 3 in northern Minnesota, she said.
During that project in 2021, Enbridge caused four aquifer breaches and released thousands of gallons of contaminated drilling fluid at water crossings, which resulted in criminal charges against the company.
“This reroute is a slap in the face of the Bad River nation,” Gokee said, because the tribe asked for the reroute to go around the entire watershed, not just around the reservation.
“These are our waters, not exclusive to the Anishinaabe people, it’s for all people. You. Me. It feeds us. All our needs are met by this land, not by Enbridge,” Gokee said.
Bad River Tribal Chairman Robert Blanchard said the reservation is more than a plot of land. It has been handed down from generation to generation, a place where wild rice and medicinal plants grow and where the tribe has hunted for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
“Everything on this planet has a spirit—the animals, water, the plant life, even the grass you walk on. We have spirit,” he said.
Concerned about the reservation’s future, tribal officials feel the data and information available on the proposed project is insufficient because it lacks data on the project’s environmental impacts.
Enbridge plans to minimize the impact the project would have on wetlands by combining portions of the project with other existing utility corridors and using open farmed areas as opposed to impacting additional, undeveloped green space . After construction is complete, about 33 acres of wetlands would be permanently cleared of woody vegetation. The remaining roughly 67 acres within the temporary construction area would naturally revert to its pre-construction condition.
Wisconsin-based construction company Michels Pipeline is the mainline contractor for the project. It plans to work with local labor unions to fill at least 700 jobs.
Ann Allen, Michels environmental and sustainability director, said the construction methods minimize or avoid environmental impacts.
“Those of which would be temporary in nature during installation and restoration of the line,” she said. “Michels is a family-owned Wisconsin-based construction company that has been in operation since 1959. Our owners and employees are outdoorsmen and women, as such, they would not support a project that would compromise wetlands, waterways and habitats in the environment of our beautiful state.”
Several labor, farm and business groups spoke in favor of the project.
It is difficult to overstate the negative effects it would have if Line 5 shut down, said Chris Summerfield, senior director of environmental energy policy for Wisconsin Manufactures & Ccommerce.
“If we shut down Line 5, a major propane supplier has warned it would close three refineries in the region,” he said, referring to a statement Sterling Koch, vice president of legal and land for Plains Midstream, made in 2022. In that statement he said if Line 5 shuts down Plains Midstream facilities in Sarnia, Rapid River and Superior would likely shut down as well.
An estimated 2,100 trucks per day would be needed to leave Superior and travel east across Michigan in order to transport the crude oil and natural gas liquids currently moved by Line 5, Summerfield said.
Dan Olson, of Superior, represents the Laborers’ International Union of North America Local 1091 and said the project will have a $135 million economic impact. Ten percent of the investment towards the project will go towards Native-owned businesses.
“So the partnership that Enbridge has garnished with the communities in the region is very good for the community,”he said
Senator Romaine Quinn voiced his support for the project as well, noting it will also bring in an extra $6.5 million in tax revenues. That revenue is needed to support the increased truck traffic on the roadways.
Blanchard wasn’t swayed by the economics of the project and has said there are alternatives to Line 5 that don’t require water crossings, including using other Enbridge pipelines that run across northern Indiana and southern Michigan.
“What Bad River has been facing since 2013 is an illegal trespass on our reservation. We struggle to see why it is so hard to protect our waters and our lands,” said Dan Wiggins, Jr., deputy director of the Bad River Band’s Mashkiiziibii Natural Resources Department and a member of the Tribal Council.
“With (Enbridge’s) deep pockets, they’ll do everything they can to get their way. They promise the sun, the moon and the stars. They promise new jobs and money—but we need clean air and clean water,” said Robert Houle, a member of the Bad River Band’s Tribal Council.
Jan Penn, a retired nurse practitioner and longtime local resident, spoke about how the reroute could endanger public health. In 2010, after a massive 800,000-gallon oil spill from an Enbridge pipeline in Michigan, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services documented many cases of respiratory, gastrointestinal, and neurological symptoms resulting from acute exposure to crude oil.
“A spill like that would be devastating for the health of our community,” said Penn.
Glenn Carlson, chairman of the Town of La Pointe on Madeline Island, said that although the reroute would create temporary jobs during pipeline construction, “any economic boost for the local economy would be short-lived.”
“In contrast, the pipeline represents a long-term threat to tourism, agriculture and other sectors of our economy that rely on clean water,” he said.
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