This morning, water protectors erected a tripod in front of the Enbridge Great Lakes office in Superior, at the terminus of the proposed Line 3 tar sands pipeline. One water protector locked down to the top of the tripod, with a message for the Enbridge shareholders: Line 3 will never be built in Minnesota.
Across northern Minnesota, water protectors gathered in Duluth and Bemidji, in solidarity against Enbridge’s promises to its shareholders that Line 3 will be fully operational by the second half of 2020. Enbridge lacks state permitting.
Resistance against new tar sands pipeline expansion projects has been fierce. Delays or cancellations of the Energy East pipeline, Keystone XL pipeline, TransMountain pipeline, and Line 3 pipeline resulted in an announcement by the Alberta Premiere that tar sands production would be reduced by 8.7% for 2019.
When asked why they would take such a personal risk to their own safety, Anthony Graham (Chumash) said, “I stand in solidarity with my relatives up north and across Turtle Island. This is for the future. We have to be brave and fight. The oil industry is trying to grow when we know climate change is killing us. No more tar sands.”