The Department of Natural Resources and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency are tasked with regulating Enbridge’s construction impacts from Line 3. After being made aware of the damage to the three public aquifer breach sites, at Clearbrook, the LaSalle Valley, and on the Fond du Lac Reservation, these agencies ordered Enbridge and their contractor, Barr Engineering, to return to those sites to “remediate” the damages they caused. 

However, the scientists and field volunteers with Waadookawaad Amikwag have observed that when these companies return to the sites they have already harmed, they do not “fix” everything. Instead, they cause further damage to already sensitive and disrupted ecosystems. They cut more trees. They bring back their timber matting and heavy construction equipment and further compact the soil and kill any plant life that had begun to grow. This top photo depicts the removal of the bog at Walker Brook crossing, replacing it with sand and aggregate layers to help bleed water through the land, rather than at the Line 3/93 pipeline. It was neither the first nor the last fix Enbridge has attempted at this yet unreported damage site.

At the LaSalle Valley they injected tens of thousands of gallons of grout concrete into the earth in an attempt to plug up the rupturing water they released. That “fix” didn’t work, and now, as the water continues to upwell, slowly dewatering that aquifer, there is also a twenty foot tall wall of concrete the length of two football fields buried under the headwaters of the Mississippi. In Summer 2022, our team found indicators that grout remnants were upwelling from the land. Near the end of 2023, we documented the LaSalle crossing corridor which now clearly indicates water being held upland, prevented from flowing down to LaSalle Creek (to the left in this photo), and creating an ugly and unsafe hazard in public lands. You can see Big LaSalle Lake in the distance. LaSalle Creek Aquatic Management Area has clearly not been protected.