WASHINGTON — The Line 5 pipeline has won a stay of execution in Wisconsin, where a federal judge sided with an Indigenous group’s complaint but stopped short…
The Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa was within its rights to revoke permission for the pipeline to cross its territory back in 2013, District Court Judge William Conley said in a written decision issued late Wednesday.Sign up to receive daily headline news from the Calgary Herald, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.By clicking on the sign up button you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.
Conley also found that the band is entitled to financial compensation from Enbridge, although the decision does not go into detail on that front. Line 5, she said, “remains an urgent threat to the band and to the fragile network of wetlands and waterways surrounding the pipeline, including the Kakagon-Bad River Sloughs and Lake Superior, a source of drinking water to millions.”
In Canada, the group Environmental Defence also cheered the decision while arguing that the pipeline must nonetheless be shut down entirely. “It is also a new fossil fuel project that is directly at odds with what is needed for collective climate action.” “The agreed-upon purpose was not, as Enbridge now asserts, to permit it to operate across the entire reservation for 50 years,” he wrote.