In face of the current pandemic, we see in sharp focus government’s critical role protecting our communities’ health. We applaud Gov. Tim Walz and his administration for their strong leadership in keeping us all safe, applying the best science for the public good.
[image_caption]Kamau Wilkins[/image_caption]
Our environmental laws were put in place for a reason. We ask the MPCA to assure the public that such “flexibility” won’t harm community health.
Specifically, the MPCA is moving forward on critical water crossing permits for the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline without real public input. It canceled in-person public hearings for safety reasons. Instead of rescheduling, it replaced them with the euphemistically named “telephone town halls. But rather than giving real opportunities for questions and dialogue on this critical issue, for the MPCA “telephone town halls” meant that callers lucky enough to get into the queue on time each got two minutes to speak into the faceless void. There was no response from the MPCA.
Enbridge has had the MPCA’s ear throughout this process. As typically happens, public hearings were tacked on at the end. The MPCA’s decision to cancel them undermined its already weak nod to public engagement. In a democracy, the public should have a stronger voice than multinational corporations. The MPCA needs to engage with Minnesotans and independent scientists in a more powerful way, hearing arguments about Line 3’s serious risks, and publicly responding to criticisms of its analysis.
Let’s be clear about the stakes. Enbridge already has admitted that it can’t build the pipeline and meet all state environmental standards. State rules say pipeline routes should avoid crossing streams and wetlands. Line 3 would cross more than 200 streams and trench through 79 miles of wetlands. That’s not avoiding streams and wetlands. The MPCA permit review failed to weigh key issues, such as the water quality damage from crude oil spills. That needs public airing.
[image_caption]Margaret Levin[/image_caption]
First, the MPCA already said “no” once to Line 3’s water crossing permits. Its first review stalled due to the Minnesota Court of Appeals’ rejection of regulators’ review of the pipeline’s spill risk. By the time that was resolved, the MPCA couldn’t meet its deadline to finish. It denied the permit and allowed Enbridge to reapply. The MPCA hasn’t explained why it can’t use this same deny-and-reapply approach based on the pandemic.
Second, the MPCA’s argument is self-serving. It’s already proposed approving the permits. It’s posted a pro-pipeline video on its webpage. Canceling public hearings conveniently avoids a difficult face-to-face conversation. Its approach sends the message that the deck is stacked for Enbridge and public hearings don’t matter anyway.
Third, there’s no need to rush the permit, let alone build the pipeline. The Minnesota Department of Commerce concluded Enbridge failed to prove Line 3 is needed for our regional energy security. Large financial institutions are backing off tar sands oil investments. Tar sands oil is the most expensive to produce and will be the first to lose profitability. Today, tar sands crude is going for $5 a barrel, cheaper than a pack of toilet paper.
Two more points deserve attention.
Last summer, Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan issued an executive order committing the state and its agencies to engage with the state’s tribes “in true government-to-government relationships built on respect, understanding, and sovereignty.” The MPCA failed this commitment. The White Earth and Red Lake Bands found the MPCA’s permit reviews inadequate and petitioned the agency to hold a contested case hearing.
Lastly, the MPCA’s mission is “to protect and improve the environment and human health.” Sadly, the agency applies a weak definition of “protect.” It’s indisputable that Line 3 would damage clean water. The MPCA’s definition of “protecting” water is to reduce damage, not prevent it. If the MPCA keeps “protecting” clean water this way, someday we won’t have any left.
The MPCA needs to say “no” to the permit. At a minimum, it needs to hold the contested case hearing when the health crisis abates, giving people the opportunity to meaningfully engage.
Kamau Wilkins is chapter chair and Margaret Levin is state director for the Sierra Club North Star Chapter.
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How is it “indisputable” that Line 3 will damage clean water? How are you suppose to route a 200-300 mile long pipeline without crossing streams or wetlands?
The existing pipeline is corroding and needs to be replaced. If it isn’t replaced, oil will be transported via rail, which has a LOT lower safety record than modern pipelines.
This entire argument isn’t about a pipeline. It’s a roundabout way to try to stop to utilization of oil in our economy. If you want to have a discussion about that, than focus on that. Not artificially trying to stop one pipeline at a time.
This is the same situation, with the same players, who tried to stop the new bridge from being built in Stillwater, causing a 20+ year delay in the construction.
I am a regular citizen, not a corporate entity. My opinion is being heard loud and clear.
I think you should look into Enbridge’s track record and then look at Canadian investor problems. Line 3 has no purpose anymore except for the actual construction profit. Line 6 is not repaired and stands to burst in the Mackinac straits. Enbridge has a spill record that should eliminate it from ever running pipelines again.
As for crossing waterways, there are LAWS and there are TREATIES– not these are not minor inconveniences, but safeguards to an earth that is being destroy on the ground by extraction industry without safeguards and air pollution contributing to the rise in CO2 in the demise of a protective atmosphere. A bridge is not an existential threat like spreading poisonous chemistry through pipelines no one will need.
I assume the industry’s 2 billion dollars has influence, but not for what is honest and truthful in stewardship of MN lands and waters for posterity.
Greed is the only motive that allows these anarchistic projects. We are in a period of energy conversion to all-electric we will see in the next 20 years.
Want jobs? Let’s encourage development and improvements to the way of life for North Country workers. Let’s hire to clean up old sites (the Dunka Pit?). Retire the old pipelines. Restore the St.Louis River watershed. There is work to do and development to expedite that does not result in exhausted resources and pollution.
We know that pipelines leak. period. This also isn’t a ‘replacement’ Its an expansion and reroute. A replacement would be similar/same diameter and route. More oil across different geology means more environmental risk.
finally, I’m still not sure what the benefit is for this? so a Canadian company can send more oil to be shipped from the port of Duluth- Superior? given oil prices recently- their economic benefit arguments seem weaker, and weaker.
The MPCA as an institution seems to be captured by Corporations. It does not seem to be about protecting the air, water, soil and our bodies from pollution, but in working with corporations to achieve their goals whatever the ecological result is. Judging by declining water and soil quality in Minnesota the past several decades, the MPCA is negligent in it’s primary mandate.
Particularly egregious has been MPCA behavior toward Enbridge, Glencore (Polymet) and Antafogasta (Twin Metals). I am curious what our nation’s founders would have thought, government putting the profits of foreign corporations ahead of the general welfare of the citizenry? I think they were very clear about it. They would think of it as criminal behavior, damaging to the spirit of the Republic. The problem is, most of our Democrat/Republican leadership is unquestioning of the motives of these foreign corporations, and unquestioning of global trade rules that give these multinationals more power than the citizenry of any country including America.
Whting Petroleum Corp, a major player in North Dakota’s oil industry, filed for bankruptcy on 3/26/20. “Analysts believe the energy sector is primed for more defaults in coming months.” Recently, we’ve seen that frack sand businesses are going belly up because of reduced demand from the ND oil patch. In a report in Narwhat (an Independent Canadian Journal) on 4/2/20, a barrel of tar sands oil dipped down to $3.82, which is less than a bottle of maple syrup. In significant measure these reductions have come from two confounding variables: the Russian-Saudi stalemate, and Covid-19 – both of which are beyond our control. These recent developments add further weight to the concern expressed by the Department of Commerce in their EIS of Line 3 in which they found estimates for future global demand for fossil fuel to be problematic, and not sufficient to support A Certificate of Need for this project. I ask two questions. First, why in this environment of economic uncertainty would the State of MN want to jeopardize one of its priceless resources, i.e. clean water, to allow a for profit entity to put another buck in their pocket? Secondly, who is the MPCA’s primary customer and stakeholder? If it is the State of MN, the MPCA will deny these permits. It is a for profit corporation, then the MPCA will sacrifice the environment and people of Minnesota. This should not be a difficult decision.
Fifty years after the streets were filled with Earth Day protesters, out of which the MPCA was born…the sad result is apparent today. The agency has completely lost track of it’s mission to serve the public interest in a healthy environment.
The corporations have captured the MPCA – time to set it free!
Yes, it is an outrage to see and hear the justifications used by some of our government agencies and leaders to allow any of the permits for AN EXPANDED TAR SANDS CRUDE OIL pipeline that would DOUBLE TRANSPORT CAPACITY across Minnesota and its priceless ecosystems at this late point in tackling our local, state and global CLIMATE EMERGENCY as well as this momentous time to finally begin better repairing our state and U.S. governments’ RELATIONSHIP WITH INDIGENOUS TRIBES AND PEOPLES in Minnesota, in the U.S. and across the globe!
The increasingly-deadly global GREENHOUSE GAS CHAMBER and the severely-damaged human communities and wildlife habitats for earth’s species that are resulting in more and more CRITICALLY-DAMAGED ECOSYSTEMS due to the unrepetent and deadly fossil fuels industry’s refusals to stop harming lives and our only home planet are nothing less that CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY AND NATURE. No excuses in the past, now, or later will ever change that simple fact to all those suffering from climate disasters, environmental harm, and eco-anxiety in our current generations and to those in gravely-compromised future generations IF we don’t immediately reverse and restore our earth’s natural systems to ensure they remain inhabitable for all the PLANETARY SPECIES that evolved to rightfully inhabit its every ecosystem without our fatal harm to not just them as a whole, but those earth species’ own INDIVIDUAL BEINGS.
I therefore call for SHAME AND ANGER upon those who are still forcing our state’s government to aid and abet those harming us and our world despite all those throughout our state who have long been ethically and rationally fighting against the sheer lunacy of a bigger, dirtier Line 3 fossil fuel pipeline over everyone else’s best needs. We need to much more rapidly diminish development and production, not help expand both by allowing the doubling of oil transport! We the people of Minnesota already told this to Minnesota agencies and legislators for years (including at our huge September 2017 public rally in St. Paul with testimonies to the Public Utilities Commission) in order to protect our own lands, waters, and air as well as our entire planet and the inherent RIGHTS OF NATURE.
I also wish to state that I was one of the people who could not get into the public speaker queue in the recent Telephone Town Hall to receive public input about the Line 3 permits — in fact, I heard that some of Enbridge’s organized supporters encouraged pre-meeting call-ins so they could get in the first open spots to be heard before and instead of others — and, therefore, I had to leave a message which I later announced doing on social media as a way to more publicly share my voice. While I am naturally glad that some form of public input was allowed at any point (which is simply the bare minimum requirement for such a crucial pollution agency decision), I am extremely unhappy that Line 3 construction is or may be allowed to proceed in any way, shape or form by Minnesota’s current leaders when it is instead RENEWABLES, ENERGY EFFICIENCY, and OTHER ENVIRONMENTALLY-SUSTAINABLE POLICIES that our state should finally be supporting to a much greater extent in order to not only be fair and beneficial to those in our state, but to also to also be benevolent through leadership by example to our country, to Canadians (many of whom also ethically stand up against the tar sands oil industry), and to the world.
For in truth, many of us know what is ethical, while a powerful few do not care what is. How will Minnesota ultimately decide to act in this crucial time of human existence? How will we be remembered? That is just one of the things that keeps me up at night and keeps me fighting back.