It looks like the Biden Administration’s commitment Environmental Justice, and to tackle global warming is wavering.
BY RACHEL FRAZIN
The Biden administration is backing the Trump administration’s approval of a controversial pipeline project in Minnesota in a new legal filing.
In a legal brief filed Wednesday, the Justice Department argued that the Army Corps of Engineers’ 2020 approval of Enbridge’s Line 3 oil pipeline followed its legal obligation to consider the project’s environmental impacts.
“Allowing Line 3 to move forward is, at best, inconsistent with the bold promises on climate and environmental justice President Biden campaigned and was elected on,” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in a statement.
“The president must listen to frontline communities, defend the right of all people to clean water and a healthy climate, and act immediately to shut down this dirty tar sands pipeline,” he added.
At issue is not the entire pipeline, which imports carbon-intensive tar sands oil from Canada, but a segment being built along a new route that the company is calling a replacement.
Pipeline opponents argued that the PUC failed to demonstrate demand for the tar sands oil that Line 3 would transport across more than 200 bodies of water, including lakes, wetlands, and rivers, posing serious risks to Minnesota’s freshwater resources and the lake country of northern Minnesota where the Ojibwe people harvest wild rice and hold treaty rights. Tar sands oil is the dirtiest and most climate-polluting fuel source on the planet. Judge Peter Reyes issued a dissenting opinion, noting that the PUC “committed legal errors and acted arbitrarily or capriciously by granting [Enbridge] a certificate of need that is unsupported by substantial evidence.”
Today’s ruling comes in the wake of a powerful series of protests along the pipeline route in Northern Minnesota, during which thousands of frontline Indigenous-led water protectors and allies gathered to block construction of the pipeline and call on federal officials to revoke Enbridge’s permits to build Line 3. For the past week, Anishinaabe band members have exercised their treaty rights and peacefully occupied a site on the Mississippi headwaters where Enbridge plans to drill its Line 3 pipeline under the river. Yesterday, Enbridge issued a letter demanding that they depart the premises.
This disappointing decision comes after the Biden Administration supported continued construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Now I have to question Biden’s commitment to Environmental Justice, and to take action to reduce catastrophic climate change.
.