Protect the woods and water

To the Editor:

A Canadian pipeline company has been trespassing on northern Wisconsin’s Bad River Reservation ever since their easement expired more than a decade ago. Elsewhere along its route through Wisconsin and Michigan, the same 71-year-old pipeline — Enbridge Line 5 — has spilled more than a million gallons of oil. Most of the oil in Line 5 comes from the Canadian tar sands, where its extraction has devastated ecosystems and human health. The vast majority of it goes right back to Canada.

Rather than shutting down Line 5 as it should, Enbridge proposes a re-route that would cross many more bodies of water, and put the pipeline upstream of not only Lake Superior and the wild rice beds of the Kakagon Sloughs, but also Copper Falls State Park. Meanwhile, carbon dioxide emissions from the oil in Line 5 add hundreds of atomic bombs’ worth of more heat energy to the atmosphere every day.

Please contact the president (202-456-1111), and urge him to revoke the federal permits allowing Enbridge Line 5 to harm the woods, waters, and climate we love in northern Wisconsin.  Rather than more fossil fuel infrastructure, we need investment in ecological restoration and renewable energy, both of which create many more jobs per dollar.

Greg Mikkelson

Polar