Elected officials from two Native American reservations are warning that the location of a proposed oil pipeline in the Great Lakes region could not be worse when it comes to creating the danger of an ecological catastrophe.
Leaders of the Ojibwe people recently spoke at a panel discussion in Chicago about the existential dangers of an oil pipeline that crosses a 4-mile channel connecting Lakes Michigan and Huron.
Attendees were asked to send a letter to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office to demand she reject a project that would allow the pipeline’s operator to bore a tunnel through the bedrock of the channel to house the pipeline; a project environmentalists call a “false solution” to their concerns.
The April 24 panel discussion brought together Whitney Gravelle, the President of the Bay Mills Indian Community in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and Robert Blanchard, the Chairman of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in northern Wisconsin.
The discussion was held nine days after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced it would expedite permits for the Great Lakes Tunnel Project, an initiative from the Canadian energy company Enbridge for its Line 5 pipeline. The discussion was also held amid a legal battle in which Enbridge has appealed a federal judge’s order to shut down a portion of Line 5 that crosses through the Bad River tribe’s reservation next year.
Built in 1953, Line 5 stretches 645 miles from Superior, Wisconsin, through the Upper Peninsula, across the Straits of Mackinac and through Michigan’s Lower Peninsula to Sarnia, Ontario.
In 2014, a researcher from the University of Michigan identified the Straits of Mackinac as the “worst possible place for an oil spill in the Great Lakes,” as currents would quickly contaminate shorelines miles away along lakes Michigan and Huron.
Enbridge’s history does little to ease these concerns. In March 1991, the company’s Line 3 pipeline ruptured near Grand Rapids, Minnesota, and spilled 1.7 million gallons of oil.
In July 2010, Enbridge’s Line 6B pipeline ruptured near Marshall, Michigan, and leaked more than 843,000 gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo River. And across the pipeline, Line 5 has leaked more than 1 million gallons of oil in 29 separate incidents from 1968 to 2017, according to data from the National Wildlife Federation.
Native American tribes and environmentalists have considered the pipeline an existential threat for decades. The United Nations’ Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues has repeatedly called for Line 5 to be decommissioned.
President Gravelle, who noted that one drop of oil can pollute six gallons of water, said that even the best circumstance of an oil spill at the Straits of Mackinac would be a “fatal heart attack” for the Great Lakes.
“Any type of oil spill that happens will have a much greater and far-reaching impact than anyone can imagine,” Gravelle said. “I mean, we’re talking about North America’s largest freshwater resource; we’re talking about the clean drinking water for over 40 million Americans.”
Enbridge reached an agreement with then-Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder in late 2018 to encase the pipeline in a tunnel, months after it was damaged by a 12,000-pound anchor.
On April 15, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced it would expedite building permits for the tunnel project, following years of public debate. While the Army Corps was expected to make a decision in 2026 after conducting a review of the project’s potential environmental impact, the process was fast-tracked thanks to a January executive order from President Donald Trump declaring a “national energy emergency” over what he calls the United States’ “inadequate development of domestic energy resources.”
While President Gravelle and Chairman Blanchard noted that no administration has been perfect, the second Trump administration has brought unique challenges.
Always a fight
“I think in any administration, it’s always a fight for our communities to have their voices heard,” Gravelle said. “But under this administration, it’s a sense and a feeling that no matter how loud you may scream, and even if they hear you, they’re not going to care.”
“Every administration has had its problems, but this one really feels like a direct attack that we have to be prepared to defend on all fronts,” she added.
Chairman Blanchard highlighted President Trump’s request that Congress eliminate funding for Head Start – a program that provides early childhood education and other services for low-income children and families – and other federal programs as a concerning example of his political agenda.
“I think we’ve been on the defense ever since he took office,” Blanchard told People’s World. “Every day something new is coming up, like ‘What funding is he going to cut now?’”
“When he first got in office, he cut all federal funding off so nobody could draw any money down to run their programs or provide services to our community,” Blanchard explained. “So it’s stuff like that that really concerns us, along with the pipeline.”
Blanchard said he’ll be in St. Paul, Minnesota, next month to give testimony to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers about the danger Line 5 poses to the Bad River tribe. He argues that erosion around a 2-mile section of Line 5 has increased the risk of a rupture.
In 2019, the Bad River tribe sued Enbridge in the hopes of shutting down and removing a section of Line 5 that runs through their reservation. The tribe said land agreements with Enbridge had expired in 2013, but the company continued to operate the line.
In 2023 a federal judge ordered Enbridge to pay the Bad River tribe more than $5 million for trespassing, and ordered that the company has until June 2026 to shut down that portion of the pipeline. Enbridge appealed and argued the judge failed to consider treaty agreements between the U.S. and Canada. Enbridge has proposed to remove and reroute the pipeline off of the reservation, which would require permits from multiple government agencies.
The Bad River tribe also appealed the judge’s ruling. Last year, Chairman Blanchard said in a statement that the pipeline ought to be shut down “within six months instead of 2026,” and called for “a larger share of the more than $1 billion that it [Enbridge] has earned from trespassing” on the reservation.
Blanchard said he opposes a reroute of the pipeline “because there’s a lot of streams that that’s going to cross; streams that go down into our watershed, which eventually go out down our rivers and out to our lake.”
“We’ve got wild rice beds out there. We have aquatic life. We have a lot of fish. We have a lot of plants and animals that use that watershed as their home. And it’s our home. So that’s what we’re fighting for,” he said.
Blanchard also noted he had consulted with officials from the Department of Natural Resources in November, who failed to notify him about a recent oil spill in which an Enbridge pipeline dumped 70,000 gallons in southeastern Wisconsin. He said he first heard about the spill on December 11, a full month afterwards.
Probably knew about it
“They probably knew about it, but they didn’t mention it to us,” Blanchard said. “I mean, I know it’s a ways away from us, but it still would have been nice to know what’s going on. And we’re afraid that something like that, or something like Kalamazoo, will happen on our reservation.”
While Enbridge spokesperson Ryan Duffy said the tunnel project will “make a safe pipeline safer,” engineering experts have previously expressed concern over the potential for an explosion at the Straits. A 2024 article in the Detroit Free Press quoted geological engineer and tunnel safety expert Brian O’Mara, who testified there are three potential explosion scenarios for the tunnel project.
This includes the risk of an oil leak from the pipeline itself and risk that groundwater containing methane could enter the tunnel after construction. Pipeline safety expert Richard Kuprewicz described the tunnel project’s design as “unusual and especially risky,” as it would allow the pipeline to move in a way that could put abnormal loading on the seams where segments of the pipe are welded. Kuprewicz said this could “result in full bore pipeline rupture.”
During a question and answer period after the panel discussion, Gravelle said she suspects the tunnel project might not be built and that it’s merely “a distraction,” considering how much cost estimates for the project have likely increased. A January report from an environmental think tank alleges the project could cost three times the initial 2018 cost estimate of $500 million.
“I think the tunnel came into creation because of the anchor strikes,” Gravelle told an audience of roughly 200 people. “Because everyone knew how close we were to actually destroying the Great Lakes, they had to think of anything that they could in order to create this perception of safety.”
Furthermore, a 2023 report from PLG Consulting found that shutting down Line 5 would barely increase gas prices by a half-cent to 1 cent per gallon. The report found that energy markets would likely adapt to a shutdown “without supply shortages or price spikes.”
“The companies participating in Line 5 products and markets are sophisticated and large energy firms that regularly evaluate and anticipate risks and market changes. Therefore, it’s not surprising that for at least the past six years, contingency plans have been developed by key refiners and other businesses whose supply chains may be altered in the event of a Line 5 shutdown,” the report concluded.
Aside from environmental and financial concerns, Gravelle and Blanchard said Line 5 presents a threat to Native American culture and heritage. Gravelle explained that the Straits of Mackinac is a “sacred and cultural space” that Anishinaabe peoples consider central to their creation story.
“If I had to think of a modern-day example, it would be like a pipeline running through the Vatican or a pipeline running through the Garden of Eden. And that is just not something that we could ever fathom,” Gravelle said. “We would never build a pipeline through the pyramids in Egypt. We would never rip apart the Coliseum in Rome to run a pipeline through it. So why are we doing that to a space that is considered sacred by Anishinaabe?”
Chairman Blanchard said an oil spill would be “devastating” for the Bad River tribe and highlighted the importance of protecting the land for future generations.
“I see the reservation now, as it is today, I see it through my grandfather’s eyes,” Chairman Blanchard said. “He’s seen it through his grandfather’s eyes. And I want my grandkids and great-grandkids to see it through mine. So I want what’s there today, minus the pipeline, I want it there for them. I need to teach them what they have to do, the way I’ve been taught.”
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