Activists marched from the Capitol to the DNR Monday to demand the agency rescind its permit for Enbridge Line 5. | Photo courtesy Ian Phillips
A group of about 50 activists occupied the lobby of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Monday to protest the agency’s approval of a permit to construct a 41-mile reroute of Enbridge’s Line 5 oil pipeline through northern Wisconsin.
Several members of the group tried to enter further into the building and one activist was arrested and put in jail, according to a news release from the coalition of indigenous and environmental groups who planned the protest. Two others were warned they’d be arrested if they tried to enter the building again.
For years, the Bad River band of Lake Superior Chippewa have fought against the pipeline, 12 miles of which crosses the tribe’s reservation, raising concerns about the pipeline’s effect on local water and the broader effects that fossil fuels have on the environment.
After declining to renew the easement that allowed the pipeline to cut across their land, the tribe sued in federal court to have it removed. In 2022 a judge ruled that Enbridge was trespassing and would have to reroute the pipeline.
The tribe is opposed to the proposed route for the new pipeline because it would be directly upstream of the reservation.
Late last year, the DNR granted a crucial permit approval for the relocation just days after another of Enbridge’s pipelines, Line 6, was found to have leaked more than 69,000 gallons of oil in the Jefferson County town of Oakland.
On Monday, the group of activists marched from the state Capitol to the DNR offices to deliver a letter demanding that the agency revoke its permit approval and support the decommissioning and removal of Line 5.
“Enbridge Line 5 abets mayhem all around the world: deforestation and water pollution in Alberta, where companies scrape tar out of sand; oil spills across Wisconsin and Michigan; and the global heating equivalent of detonating hundreds of atomic bombs in the atmosphere every single day,” Greg Mikkelson, an organizer with the Cross Border Organizing Working Group, said in a statement. “The proposed expansion of this pipeline would lock in dependence on this disaster-genic source of energy for decades to come. Meanwhile, Wisconsinites consume virtually none of the oil or gas carried in Line 5. Shame on the DNR for approving the expansion, even while covering up a brand-new spill from Line 6, another Enbridge pipeline in Wisconsin.”
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