Last week, Sierra Club leaders and partners from Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois traveled to Washington, DC to participate in Congressional meetings, a briefing for congressional staff, and reception on Capitol Hill to call for action on Enbridge’s Line 5 re-route proposal. The group included 8 high schoolers from around Wisconsin who made powerful statements about the Line threatening their water and their future.
In addition to meeting with members of Congress from Wisconsin, participants met with Leader Jeffries' staff, and the EPA Office of Environmental Justice, and ended the two days with a briefing for Congressional staff, and a reception with special guest Senator Gary Peters (MI).
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Line 5 is a dangerous, deteriorating, unsafe oil pipeline running from Wisconsin, across the Michigan Upper Peninsula (UP) to Canada including through the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac in the Great Lakes. This pipeline is operating illegally through the Bad River Band reservation and the Straits of Mackinac. It poses catastrophic risks to the Treaty-protected lands, pristine natural areas, valuable freshwater sources (including 400 rivers, streams, and wetlands), and farmland that it cuts through. A pipeline failure in the heart of the Great Lakes threatens the drinking water of 40 million people.
Enbridge is seeking permission from the Army Corps of Engineers to reroute a portion of the Line 5 oil pipeline in Wisconsin. Approving this request would extend the threat to the Great Lakes, violate the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa’s directive to remove the pipeline from the watershed, and extend the life of the pipeline, locking in the carbon pollution that comes from it. Participants asked members of Congress to demand a full environmental review of the pipeline. You can too! Click here to write to the Army Corps and demand a full environmental review.
Additionally, we urged our Congresspeople to call on the Biden Administration to shut down this pipeline once and for all by pulling the Presidential Permit. We were able to end the day standing in solidarity with the Standing Rock Tribe in their efforts to get the Dakota Access pipeline shut down. At the press conference, U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley, Standing Rock Chairwoman Janet Alkire, Chairman Ryman LeBeau of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, and two Standing Rock youth spoke.
