The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has granted approval to Canadian company Enbridge for its plan to reroute a section of its Line 5 oil pipeline around a Wisconsin tribal reservation.
The Army Corps, a federal engineering service, issued a permit Wednesday for Enbridge to build a new 41-mile segment of pipeline around the Bad River Reservation, to replace an existing section that currently crosses tribal territory.
The Bad River Band filed a lawsuit in 2019 aimed at getting the pipeline off its land, citing concerns about treaty rights and the risk a potential oil spill would pose to Indigenous people and the environment.
Enbridge submitted permit applications to state and federal regulators in 2020 for the Wisconsin relocation project. The permit issued Wednesday is a major project milestone, an Enbridge spokeswoman said, though construction cannot begin until multiple state permits issued last year are confirmed.
Opponents of Line 5, including environmental organizations, have been contesting those permits, arguing Enbridge’s plans do not properly protect Wisconsin’s waterways.
Enbridge said Thursday it is confident state permits will soon be confirmed.
Enbridge’s Line 5 is a 645-mile oil pipeline constructed in 1953 that carries oil from Superior, Wisconsin, through Michigan and into Ontario, Canada. In addition to its plan to reroute a section of the pipeline in Wisconsin, the company is planning to build a roughly 4-mile tunnel to house the aging section of pipeline that crosses through the Straits of Mackinac in the Great Lakes.
Michigan regulators had approved Enbridge’s application to build the $750-million tunnel under the Great Lakes to house its aging Line 5 oil pipeline in 2023, but the project still awaits Army Corps permitting. The Army Corps said earlier this year it plans to issue that decision this fall.
(Reporting by Amanda Stephenson in Calgary; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama )