‘They screwed up our lake’: tar sands pipeline is sucking water from Minnesota watersheds

The Anishinaabe are trying to protect their lakes and traditional wild rice harvests.

Indigenous Anishinaabe wild rice harvesters Jerry and Jim Libby placed a row of wooden pallets in the muck just beyond the dock of Upper Wild Rice Lake, along the eastern boundary of the White Earth Indian Reservation in northwestern Minnesota watersheds. It was a clear day, and across the lake’s horizon, tight, luxuriant clumps of green rice heads could be seen.

In a typical year, at least two meters of water would enter the region — one of a long string of wild rice lakes in northern Minnesota, to which the region’s native inhabitants migrate each year late in the summer. It now consists, however, of a thick suspended sludge, which makes the Libbys create a fortune-free ramp to get their canoe off to the waterway. Their size is really high.

Minnesota is under historic drought, but there is a second issue alongside the weather: the Enbridge 3 tar sand pipeline has been devastated by the watersheds of the region, including the authorization to pump for construction 5 trillion gallons of water. In the instance of the Upper Wild Rice Lake, a road-building business known as the Knife River Construction discharged some unknown quantities of water into the lake last June.

Jerry Libby says, “As far as I’m concerned, Enbridge messed damaged our lake and they’re stealing money away from our family.” “It makes us upset — you know, this is our basic food.”

The biggest environmental and Indigenous land protection effort in the US this summer has been the Indigenous-led fight against Line 3, which aims to transport 930,000 barrels of tar sands bitumen daily from Alberta to a shipping and refinery center in Superior, Wisconsin. More than 900 individuals have been arrested in protest of the pipeline, including over 70 who were detained in late August outside Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s Minneapolis residence.

The new pipeline dubbed a “replacement,” would increase the capacity of Line 3 to transport tar sands bitumen. The pipeline will begin transporting oil next month, according to Enbridge, a Canadian energy corporation.

According to research by the non-profit Oil Change International, the processing and combustion of bitumen for the pipeline will emit greenhouse gases equivalent to 50 coal plants, considerably adding to the global climate catastrophe. However, one of the pipeline’s most direct effects is on wild rice harvesters like the Libbys, whose yearly harvesting season began in late August and continues into September.

Wild rice, also called “manoomin” or “meal that grows on water” by many Anishinaabe people, is a thick, nutrient-packed grain that grows naturally in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and sections of Canada’s plentiful lakes and rivers. Thousands of Anishinaabe people continue to harvest it using the same generations-old ways of moving a canoe or small boat across the rice beds with a long pole.

According to longtime Anishinaabe rice harvester Bob Shimek, indigenous peoples in the region believe they have a sacred covenant to safeguard manoomin and several other nonhuman animals, without which they would cease to exist as unique peoples. “Wild rice is part of any ceremony that we hold here,” said Shimek. “A piece of Anishinaabe’s soul cuisine reminds me.”

The Mississippi River headwaters and some of the region’s main rice waters, streams, lakes, and watercourses cross over over over 200 bodies of water through Line 3. Without public notification and engagement with the State Department of Natural Resources in relation to the White Earth Indian Reserve, Enbridge had the power to extract over five billion gallons from these water basins.

The pipeline’s implications on water and the animals that rely on it are extensive, according to Christy Dolph, a University of Minnesota research scientist focused on the state’s water resources. Enbridge pumps off any remaining groundwater that seeps into the trench while excavating trenches to lay pipe, causing water to evaporate.

“Such intervention has a significant impact, especially if the drought has already weakened those wetlands,” she adds.

Opponents are also concerned about tar sands pipeline leaks and spills, especially since the thick substance is nearly impossible to clean up.

Wild rice, like other wetland plant species, is extremely sensitive to changes in water levels, which impair its capacity to grow and reseed. Rice harvesters are unable to paddle their canoes out to their normal rice fields due to low water levels, depriving them of a vital source of physical and spiritual sustenance, as well as a substantial source of revenue.

The Libby brothers claim that rice harvesting earns them up to $9,000 a year, which they put toward basic needs like home repairs, school supplies for their grandchildren, and vehicle upkeep. However, since the harvesting season started in late August, many harvesters have had to resort to unconventional methods like trekking through muddy, dried-out lakes in snowshoes with burlap sacks slung around their shoulders, a strategy that gives the amount they can gather on boat one-third to one-fourth.

Enbridge denies any responsibility for the dry conditions in rice fields along the pipeline path, or that the pipeline has a negative influence on watersheds. “The permission criteria for Line 3 protect the environment during construction, particularly wild rice,” stated Enbridge spokeswoman Juli Kelner in an email. “The pipelines of Enbridge have coexisted alongside the holiest and rich wild rice stands in Minnesota for seven decades.”

A representative for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources said in response to a request for comment, “The Minnesota DNR has continually tried to minimize the impacts of the Line 3 replacement project on wild rice and other Minnesota resources.” These efforts stem from our first comments to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) on project routing, in which we pushed for route alternatives that avoided crossings in or near wild rice waters.”

The White Earth Band of Ojibwe has filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit in which wild rice is the plaintiff, alleging that the building of Line 3 has harmed wild rice. According to the lawsuit, wild rice “possesses inherent rights to exist, prosper, regenerate, and evolve, as well as inherent rights to restoration, recovery, and preservation” under a series of treaties signed by Chippewa Anishinaabe people with the US government in the mid-nineteenth century. The lawsuit seeks an injunction against the Department of Natural Resources to revoke Enbridge’s water permit, however, the matter may not be decided until after the project is finished.

Wild rice confronts several risks, including the climatic crisis, in addition to the direct effects of the Line 3 pipeline. Climate change would devastate practically all of the plant and animal species on which they rely, according to a 2018 assessment by the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC), an intertribal institution that strives to defend Anishinaabe treaty rights. According to the paper, wild rice is the most vulnerable of these species due to its sensitivity to flooding, drought, and disease outbreaks.

Opponents argue that stopping Line 3 is critical to addressing the climate problem because tar sands are one of the most carbon-intensive fossil fuels and that building new fossil fuel infrastructure locks in emissions for decades. Activists have been urging the Biden administration to halt the pipeline by instructing the Army Corps of Engineers to cancel the permit issued by the Trump administration to the project.

Despite the project’s imminent completion, Anishinaabe wild rice harvester Angel Stevens, a member of the anti-pipeline Manoomin Camp, says the fight against Line 3 is still going strong. She said, “We’re continuing to do everything we can to stop this pipeline.”