BAD RIVER BAND of Lake Superior Chippewa Tribal Council member Dan Wiggins Jr. at a news conference in June 2024 opposing the Enbridge Inc. Line 5 pipeline in northern Wisconsin. (Photo courtesy of Midwest Environmental Advocates)

Over two days of hearings this week, members of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, environmental advocates and experts testified against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers granting a permit to reroute Enbridge’s Line 5 oil and natural gas pipeline in northern Wisconsin.

The tribe’s testimony was one of its last chances to prevent the new pipeline from being installed upstream of its reservation — which the tribe says will harm water quality in the watershed, encourage the growth of invasive species and damage wetlands, diminishing the ability to filter pollutants out of runoff before reaching surface waters.

Enbridge insists the reroute plans do everything possible to minimize the environmental effect of pipeline construction and operation while industry groups and labor unions say the project has been vetted to ensure it isn’t harmful and that the arguments against the environmental effects of construction could be used to slow down any project in the state, not just those the tribe disagrees with politically.

Last year, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources issued its own permits for the company to build the pipeline with more than 200 added conditions to ensure compliance with state standards. Months after the DNR’s permit decision, a separate pipeline operated by Enbridge in Wisconsin spilled 69,000 gallons of crude oil in Jefferson County.

The tribe is also challenging the DNR’s permit determination in a series of hearings later this summer.

A BILLBOARD IN Michigan promoting Enbridge Inc. (Susan Demas/Michigan Advance photo)

For decades, Line 5 ran through the tribe’s reservation and in 2023 a federal judge ordered that it be shut down. Since 2020, Enbridge has been working on a plan to reroute the pipeline, which runs from far northwest Wisconsin 645 miles into Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, under the Straits of Mackinac and across the U.S. border into Canada near Detroit. It transports about 23 million gallons of crude oil and natural gas liquids daily.

At the hearings this week, the tribe argued that under the Clean Water Act, the Corps shouldn’t grant the permits because the tribe has determined the new pipeline will negatively affect its water quality.

Tribal chairman makes the case against Line 5

“Our people have resided in the Bad River watershed for hundreds of years,” Robert Blanchard, the tribe’s chairman, said Tuesday. “It’s our homeland. If the U.S. Army Corps grants these permits, Enbridge is undoubtedly going to destroy and pollute our watershed by trenching, blasting and horizontal drilling across hundreds of upstream wetlands and streams. I’m asking the U.S. Army Corps to think of the people and all the living things this will affect, and to deny the permit for this project.”

During Tuesday’s testimony, Blanchard added, “When I look at my homelands, I see it through the eyes of my grandfather, who saw it through the eyes of his grandfather.”

Blanchard said he wants his grandchildren to be able to see their homelands through his eyes, too. He recounted boating up the Bad River toward Lake Superior as a boy, catching fish with his elders to eat or to sell at the market. His grandfather taught him to hunt and gather and to this day Blanchard gathers medicinal herbs which are used by his community, he said. He remembers the lumber companies that clear cut the forests, and, he said, some of his loved ones have died of cancer after living near an industrial dump site.

“That was all in the Bad River watershed,” said Blanchard. He stressed that in tribal tradition, all things in nature have spirit, including the water. To the Bad River Band, nature is not only critical to human survival, it is a sacred thing to be protected.

In their testimony Tuesday, Enbridge consultants and researchers downplayed concerns about how the pipeline reroute could harm local ecosystems. Just over 118 acres of forest will need to be cleared during construction and turned into a managed grassland. Experts testifying for the company said that the underground pipeline will not act as an underwater dam and disrupt groundwater flow, nor will the explosives used to blast trenches for the pipeline present a danger. Other concerns such as radioactive contamination, PFAS pollution (often called forever chemicals) and arsenic are not used by the project, and have not been detected in the area.

Although Enbridge’s consultants and experts argued that the project would not violate the Bad River Band’s water quality standards, the Band itself disagreed, citing concerns about pollutants, water quantity and quality, hydrology, mineral content and water temperature.

Connie Sue Martin, and environmental attorney who testified against the project said the Bad River Band “is the expert” on water quality in the area, not U.S. government agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency.

Esteban Chiriboga, a geologist with the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, testified that the rerouted pipeline’s distance from the reservation is irrelevant because contaminants can travel. Using imagery from Laser Imaging, Detection and Ranging technology, Chiriboga demonstrated that waterways and flow channels between rivers, creeks and wetlands are interconnected. Others who spoke against the project on Tuesday expressed concerns about the potential for increased runoff, soil erosion, and the spread of invasive species as consequences of the project.

On Wednesday, much of the tribe’s testimony centered around the ways in which the tribe’s members rely on the Bad River and its tributaries.

“You will not find another community so dependent upon subsistence harvesting and dependent upon the health of our environment,” said Dylan Jennings, a member of the tribe and former appointee of Gov. Tony Evers to the state Natural Resources Board. “Simply put, our community maintains a relationship with the entire ecosystem and not a segmented area, we continue to utilize an entire system approach which naturally extends beyond our reservation boundaries.”

Union members testify in favor of Line 5

During the public comment period of the hearing Wednesday, a number of labor union representatives defended the project as a source of local jobs and environmentally safe. Chad Ward, a representative of the Teamsters Local 346, said members of his union will work on the project and live locally, so they take “very seriously our commitment to the community and the environment around the construction site.” But, he said, the tribe’s complaints could be made about any construction project in the area.

“I and others have grave concerns that the assertions made by the tribe could have impacts well beyond the Line 5 project itself,” Ward said. “Construction practices considered industry and regulatory best practices for environmental protection are cited as reasons by the tribe for why this project should not proceed, practices that are standard use all over the country”

“They are practices the Band has been fine with for dozens of projects in the same area,” he continued. “This leaves the impression that these concerns are more based on the political views of the project than the construction method themselves. And while they’re entitled to their political views, it is the job of the permitting process to determine if the laws and regulations are being followed, not weigh the political arguments.”

After Wednesday, the Army Corps will accept written comments on the permit approval for 30 days and then can make a decision any time after that. The hearings on the legal challenge to the DNR permits begin Aug. 12 in Ashland.

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