5 hours ago
For seven years, Indigenous communities and environmental groups in Minnesota have fought to stop Canadian oil company Enbridge from building an oil pipeline called Line 3. This pipeline, proposed in 2014, would replace a much older pipeline by the same name, which was built in the 1960s, and has been disastrous for the environment in Minnesota. In 1991, the original Line 3 ruptured, spilling 1.7 million gallons of oil onto the frozen Prairie River in what is to date the largest inland oil spill in United States history; clean-up crews had to use hoses to suck the spilled oil off of the ice and into tanker trucks, preventing it from reaching the Mississippi River, only two miles away.
Enbridge's Line 3 pipeline construction is running into tribal resistance over fears of water pollution, wild rice impacts, climate change, and exploitation of Native women.