Line 5 Poses Catastrophic Risks—It’s Past Time President Biden Shut It Down

Any day now, the Biden administration could weigh in on the future of the most dangerous, outdated, and unnecessary oil pipeline in the country. We don’t need to wait for a lengthy legal process to play out while this ticking time bomb puts us at risk. President Biden can decommission and shut down Line 5, an aging oil pipeline running through the Great Lakes, by revoking its presidential permit before it’s too late.

Line 5 is owned by the Canadian company Enbridge, the biggest of Big Oil transporters. As a shortcut to get its oil to a Canadian refinery in Sarnia, Ontario—which receives 95% of the product—Line 5 cuts through Wisconsin and Michigan. While the Canadian government has protected the oil industry and Enbridge, the Biden Administration has the opportunity to side with the people of Michigan and Wisconsin instead of Big Oil.

Along its 645-mile route, Line 5 has failed 33 times already, spilling at least 1.1 million gallons of oil since 1968. Despite the risks and Enbridge’s historic failures as a pipeline operator, the Biden Administration, under pressure from Canada, has been silent on Line 5’s future. The pipeline continues to illegally operate through the Bad River Band's land in northern Wisconsin and the Straits of Mackinac in Michigan.

Line 5 is dubious engineering and a bad investment for Michigan and Wisconsin, built across the most vulnerable site for an oil spill in the entire Great Lakes watershed.

Canada’s government is lobbying the Biden Administration to keep the aging Line 5 operational, but local leaders have long called for it to be shut down. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed a lawsuit to shut Line 5 down because it runs through the Straits of Mackinac, threatening the world’s greatest freshwater source. Meanwhile, a federal judge in Wisconsin sided with the Bad River Band and ordered the pipeline off tribal lands where Line 5 trespasses through a sensitive tribal watershed. President Biden has a choice: side with local leaders working to protect their water and communities or side with a foreign company looking to increase their profits.

Communities and leaders are calling for Line 5 to be shut down, which can be done without raising prices at the pump. Rather than respect the law, Enbridge has proposed work around schemes that would continue to put communities at risk.

The Bad River Band tribe has demanded that Line 5 get off their land and out of their watershed—yet the pipeline remains upstream and still puts the tribe at risk. Instead of complying with the tribe’s demand, Enbridge proposes building a reroute that skirts the entire reservation. While the reroute would no longer cross through tribal land, it would be located upstream of the reservation, keeping the Tribal Community in harm’s way of future spills.

Enbridge has proposed the Great Lakes Tunnel Project to house the new Line 5 pipeline. It would be a concrete tunnel, 21 feet in diameter, that runs under the Straits of Mackinac. This is dubious engineering and a bad investment for Michigan and Wisconsin, built across the most vulnerable site for an oil spill in the entire Great Lakes watershed.

It’s clear that Enbridge is a bad actor that can’t be trusted, and has a terrible safety record of oil pipeline disasters. In addition to the 1.1 million gallons of toxic oil Line 5 has already spilled, Enbridge’s other disastrous tar sands pipeline, Line 3, ruptured four aquifers in northern Minnesota during construction alone, which Enbridge touts as the safest construction possible. In its Line 5 maintenance—or lack thereof—Enbridge has violated pipeline support standards and numerous other legal doctrines that protect us and our shared natural resources from the dangers of oil spills. In its 70 years of operating Line 5, Enbridge has demonstrated countless times that it simply doesn’t care about its repeated violations and instead would rather prioritize their profits than abiding by the law and protecting our communities.

There is no justification to keep Line 5 operating or extend its life when science—and the Biden administration’s own stated commitment to climate action require us to rapidly transition away from fossil fuels. President Biden must step up and use his presidential authority to force Line 5 to shut down. It’s either us, the people who live in the Great Lakes region, or Big Oil.