We’re getting a slow drip of information on serious construction damage from Enbridge’s tar sands pipeline
Line 3 construction breached an aquifer just west of the Fond du Lac Reservation, Sept. 10, 2021
Minnesota state regulators are stingy with information, so it’s up to citizen volunteers to make it public
by Scott Russell via Healing Minnesota Stories
This post is a collaboration between Healing Minnesota Stories and Waadookawaad Amikwag.
The list of Minnesota wetlands and aquifers damaged by Enbridge Line 3 construction just keeps growing.
During Line 3 construction in 2021, we learned Line 3 construction breached three aquifers:
Clearbrook: Clearwater County, 1855 Treaty Territory, about 10 miles from the Red Lake Reservation;
LaSalle Valley: Hubbard County, 1855 Treaty Territory, about 10 miles from the White Earth Reservation;
St. Louis County, 400 feet from the Fond du Lac Reservation, 1854 Treaty Territory.
Since construction ended, citizen volunteers have continued to patrol the pipeline corridor, identifying damage state regulators haven’t found yet, or at least haven’t made public. Volunteers include drone operators, ground spotters, and professional scientists.
In March, the group made public significant water problems at Walker Brook (Clearwater County in 1855 Treaty Territory, 10 miles from the White Earth Reservation). (Not an aquifer breach, but still damaging.)
The volunteer group now is confirming a fourth aquifer breach in a wetland just south of Moose Lake, a wild rice lake in Aitkin County in 1855 Treaty Territory, about 50 miles from the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe’s Reservation.
Expect more news on aquifer breaches
Volunteers measure the water temperature of springs. Here, 44.9 degrees indicates it’s not surface water, but from a colder underground source, a sign of a potential aquifer breach. Photo: Waadookawaad Amikwag.
The volunteer group calls itself Waadookawaad Amikwag (Anishinaabemowin for “Those Who Help Beaver”).
Jeffrey Broberg, a retired professional geologist, helps the group interpret thermal images taken by drones flying along the pipeline corridor.
If they get a thermal signature that looks like a potential aquifer breach (cold water), they send out ground spotters to investigate.
“There has been a disturbing pattern of these aquifer breaches that have occurred because construction workers drove sheet pilings too deep,” puncturing shallow aquifer caps, Broberg said.
Both Enbridge and state regulators showed a lack of due diligence, he said. “If they had done soil borings and monitoring wells, they would have identified these.”
“We allege there are four dozen of these sites along the construction corridor.”
Getting state regulators to share information has been challenging. They don’t make public statements or issue media releases until investigations are complete and fines imposed.
It can be a long wait. Workers finished Line 3 on Oct. 1, 2021, more than a year and a half ago. Regulators haven’t made any public announcements about construction damage at Walker Brook or Moose Lake. They have responded to Data Practices Act requests on Walker Brook and Moose Lake.
““What Enbridge did was gamble. …
They did this all over the state.””
Waadookawad Amikwag is calling on the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) to join us in publicly sharing the devastating details of Enbridge’s aquifer destruction across our state.
Enbridge is trying to build a new Line 5 crude oil pipeline through northern Wisconsin and Michigan, including a proposed tunnel under the Great Lakes. It’s important for regulators and residents of those states know our experience with Enbridge here in Minnesota.
No place for a pipeline
Line 3 construction near Moose Lake breached an aquifer, creating new springs. Photo: Waadookawaad Amikwag, July, 2023.
The pipeline passes just south of Moose Lake through a peat bog which has developed over 13,000 year, Broberg said. Peat bogs are composed entirely of organic matter and are completely saturated with water.
Prior to construction, the DNR identified concerns about Moose Lake and other areas where the line crossed peat areas. Whatever precautions were taken were not enough.
To state the obvious, dig a trench in a wetland and it fills with water. To keep the water back, workers drive sheet pilings – tall, corrugated steel sheets – into the ground to block groundwater flow into the trench. Water still seeps in, so workers use pumps, too.
Enbridge laid the pipeline during the winter when the ground was frozen. Even then, workers used sheet pilings “due to the unstable nature of the floating mat peat in this area,” Enbridge wrote in an Oct. 3 memo to the DNR and the MPCA.
“Enbridge Line 5, as proposed, would cross more peat areas than Line 3 did.”
Just because the work took place in winter didn’t mean it wasn’t destructive.
An artesian aquifer lies 16 to 20 feet below the wetland south of Moose Lake. (An artesian aquifer is an area where groundwater is held underground, under pressure, by an impervious cap such as clay. Break the clay seal and the water rushes to the surface.)
At Moose Lake, workers drove sheet pilings 28 feet deep, at least eight feet deeper than the aquifer cap, and punctured it, according to an April 21 memo from Enbridge to the DNR and the MPCA.
It appears it was only after the aquifer breach that regulators required Enbridge to investigate the area’s hydrology.
“State rules say pipelines should avoid wetlands. Line 3 crosses 78 miles of wetlands.”
After the breach, Enbridge conducted a “desktop evaluation.” (This means you sit at a computer and look for public data on the site’s hydrology.)
This seat-of-the-pants evaluation concluded that there was likely an artesian aquifer underground, according to the April 21 memo.
If Enbridge or its consultants had done this basic assessment prior to construction, the breech could have been avoided.
“Any competent geologist should have insisted that Enbridge do this evaluation before construction started,” Broberg said.
One of a cluster of springs from the aquifer breach. Photo: Waadookawaad Amikwag, July, 2023.
Laura Triplett, another geologist supporting Waadookawaad Amikwag, said water tests showed the chemistry of this new upwelling water is different than the surrounding natural stream water: the upwellings have higher concentrations of calcium, iron and magnesium, and importantly they have measurable amounts of sulfate, a compound that at slightly higher concentrations can be damaging to wild rice.
“Is it a problem? We don’t know, and they don’t know, what the ultimate impacts are,” Triplett said. “We shouldn’t be gambling with Moose Lake, which is a wild rice lake.”
“What Enbridge did was gamble.”
Enbridge’s failure to investigate site conditions near Moose Lake is an example of its “reckless endangerment” of Minnesota’s environment, Triplett said.
“They did this all over the state.”
Mistakes began at the outset
The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) approved Enbridge’s preferred route, even though it violated state rules and lacked support from the MPCA and DNR.
State rules say pipelines should avoid wetlands — especially if the pipeline needs to be buried underground. The rule makes no exceptions. Line 3 crosses 78 miles of wetlands, more than 20 percent of its route.
Enbridge’s preferred route crosses “a relatively high percentage of high or highest groundwater vulnerability,” the MPCA said, according to Line 3’s administrative record. The agency said rebuilding Line 3 in its existing trench “offers the greatest potential to minimize potential adverse effects to surface water and groundwater resources.”
“Broberg wonders what the DNR and the MPCA are going to do if the damages can’t be fixed.”
The DNR agreed, saying the in-trench option minimized “the potential impacts to state managed natural resources.”
The in-trench option faced a big obstacle. It would pass through the Leech Lake Reservation, which was adamant it wouldn’t grant Enbridge an easement.
It wasn’t the PUC’s job to approve the route Enbridge wanted or to make sure Enbridge could make a profit. It’s job was to review the project and approve the route where the benefits to society outweighed the costs.
Against the advice of the MPCA and DNR — and with Enbridge’s say-so that it could build the route safely — the PUC approved the company’s plan.
Who’s accountable?
Broberg recalled conversations with MPCA and DNR staff about the problems with the approved route.
They said “Don’t blame us; it was the PUC’s decision.”
This raises significant questions about accountability in Line 3’s Byzantine, multi-agency review.
After the PUC approved two Line 3 permits, Enbridge still needed nine permits from the DNR and five permits from the MPCA, as well as a number of others from different agencies.
If the MPCA or DNR had serious concerns about the route, they should have had the ability to say “no.” If they didn’t – if the PUC’s route decisions preempted their authority – then something’s seriously wrong. The MPCA and DNR are the agencies with the most technical expertise in these areas.
Given that the DNR and MPCA had serious concerns about the approved route, they should have taken special care to make sure Enbridge understood the route’s hydrology and all the potential risk.
Based on the damage on the ground, whatever they did wasn’t enough.
Permanent damage
The Moose Lake breach created a cluster of new “springs,” while three springs that existed prior to construction have run dry.
If parts of a peat bog dry up, it changes to a “muck” environment, Broberg said.
Photo taken at wetland south of Moose Lake. Photo: Waadookawaad Amikwag, July, 2023.
A Waadookawaad Amikwag ground spotter recently visited Moose Lake and said some areas have dried up, showing surface cracks in the dirt.
“It does not look healthy,” she said. “They didn’t properly return the top layer of soil.”
Broberg said the state permits don’t recognize the fact that — once peat bogs are disturbed like this — they cannot be restored.
This will be a big deal for the proposed Enbridge Line 5 pipeline, he said. Line 5, as proposed, would cross more peat areas than Line 3 did.
No good options
As volunteers identify more environmental damage along the pipeline corridor, they worry about alerting state regulators, Broberg said. Attempted repairs can do more harm than good.
“Workers construct a new wood-plank road, bring in heavy equipment, and it’s another year of disturbance without addressing the problem,” he said. “Our drone work, thermal images, and our field visits have shown that the Enbridge mitigation attempts at Walker Brook, LaSalle, and Fond du Lac are all allowing further damage rather than working to protect our water.”
The damage at Walker Brook valley reflects another state rule violation. The rules say pipeline routes should avoid steep hills. Line 3 runs straight down a steep hill into Walker Brook. The hill has a high water table. The water took the path of least resistance, flowing next to the pipeline and causing erosion problems.
Enbridge had to reinstall a wood-plank road at Walker Brook to make a post-construction repair. It still might not be fixed.
The fix at Walker Brook involved excavating a hillside area 20 feet wide, 280 feet long, and two-and-a-half feet deep. Workers filled it in with a foot of sand and a foot of gravel, and capped it with a half foot of top soil.
This is far from returning the site to its original condition.
Drone’s eye view of excavation work at Walker Brook valley, January, 2023.
Permanent permits needed
All this damage represents permit violations.
Uncontrolled flow from a confined aquifer is a permit violation, Broberg said. Dried-up springs are a permit violation and a change in wetland type. The permit also required Enbridge to restore these ecological systems, but it hasn’t. (Enbridge has five years to remediate and restore the corridor.)
Broberg wonders what the DNR and the MPCA are going to do if unpermitted damages can’t be fixed.
If the damage is permanent, regulators should require permanent permits, he said. Then, state agencies would have to document the permanent environmental changes that are occurring — in perpetuity.
Ignoring the Why?
The DNR and MPCA rely on Enbridge and its contractors such as Barr Engineering and Stantec to provide information on the breaches and propose fixes.
Enbridge’s reports explain what problems happened, but not why – what human, equipment, or research failures led to the breach? There’s no indication in the public record that regulators have tried to get to the “why?”
‘Enbridge has acted irresponsibly and illegally, created disasters, and covered them up.’
Minnesota Environmental Partnership
Why has Enbridge had so many aquifer breaches due to sheet pilings? Why was construction allowed to start near Moose Lake (and near Fond du Lac) without knowing the area’s hydrology? Why didn’t these failures stop construction?
Without knowing the “why,” it’s difficult to hold people and institutions accountable.
Lack of public scrutiny
Line 3’s aquifer breaches and other environmental damage have received little to no in-depth attention by the mainstream media or lawmakers.
Of particular concern, Enbridge significantly diverted from its construction plans near Clearbook. The DNR had OK’ed digging an eight- to ten-foot-deep trench. Instead, workers trenched 18 feet deep – and drove sheet pilings 28 feet into the ground, breaching the aquifer.
That doesn’t feel like an accident.
Enbridge kept the information from state regulators for more than four months.
Ultimately, it took a year to fix. Workers pumped 547,692 gallons of grout (think cement) into the ground, according to Enbridge documents. (For a mental picture, that’s enough to build a grout wall two-feet thick, 15-feet tall, and nearly a half-mile long.)
The breach would release 72.8 million gallons from the shallow aquifer.
In a Sept. 16, 2021 media release, DNR Commissioner Sarah Strommen called Enbridge’s actions “clear violations of state law and also of public trust.”
Yet these are just words. Given its financial resources, Enbridge faced little consequence for the damage it did.
The Minnesota Environmental Partnership posted this stinging criticism:
Throughout the construction of Line 3, Enbridge has acted irresponsibly and illegally, created disasters, and covered them up. Enbridge’s goal has been to build this pipeline as fast as possible and at any cost. Permit violations are in the dozens and shoddy construction practices have left a wake of destruction through Minnesota’s most pristine waters, wetlands and wild rice beds. …
On January 21, 2021, Enbridge breached an artesian aquifer near Clearbrook, Minnesota. … To avoid a Stop Work Order and construction delays, Enbridge didn’t tell state regulators or environmental monitors about the breach. It opted to continue construction for the oil pipeline and worry about fixing the aquifer later.
The wetland-stream ecosystem near Moose Lake is complex, extremely delicate, and easily compacted. Imagine the disaster that would unfold should there be an oil spill in this area — not only from the spill itself but from all the heavy equipment Enbridge would need to bring in for the cleanup.