The Line 5 oil pipeline that snakes through Wisconsin and Michigan won a key permit this month: pending federal studies and approvals, Canada-based Enbridge Energy will build a new section of pipeline and tunnel underneath the Great Lakes despite widespread Indigenous opposition. You may not have heard of Line 5, but over the next few years, the controversy surrounding the 645-mile pipeline is expected to intensify.

The 70-year-old pipeline stretches from Superior, Wisconsin, through Michigan to Sarnia, Ontario, transporting up to 540,000 gallons of oil and natural gas liquids per day. It’s part of a network of more than 3,000 miles of pipelines that the company operates throughout the U.S. and Canada, including the Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota where hundreds of opponents were arrested or cited in 2021 for protesting construction, including citizens and members of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians and White Earth Band of Ojibwe.

Now, Enbridge Energy, with the support of the Canadian government, is seeking approvals to build a new $500 million conduit to replace an underwater section of Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac, while facing lawsuits backed by dozens of Indigenous nations as well as the state of Michigan.

A key concern is the aging pipeline’s risk to the Great Lakes, which represent more than a fifth of the world’s fresh surface water. Environmental concerns are so great that three years ago, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer ordered Enbridge’s dual pipelines that run for 4 miles at the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac to cease operations.

“The state is revoking the easement for violation of the public trust doctrine, given the unreasonable risk that continued operation of the dual pipelines poses to the Great Lakes,” the governor’s office said at the time.

The move came just a year after the Bad River Band tribal nation filed a lawsuit against Enbridge regarding another, separate section of Line 5 in Wisconsin located across 12 miles of the Bad River reservation. The pipeline had been installed in 1953 and, at the time, had received easements to do so from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

But the easements expired, and in a court filing, the tribal nation said the company “has continued to operate the pipeline as if it has an indefinite entitlement to do so,” despite federal law that bans the renewal of expired right-of-way permits on Indian land and would require Enbridge to obtain new permits and approvals from the Band.

The Bad River won a key victory last summer when a Wisconsin judge ruled that the company must shut down the portion of its pipeline that trespasses on the reservation by 2026.........

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