One of the most egregious examples of wetland destruction is at the Line 3/93 crossing of Walker Brook, a headwaters stream of the Red River of the North. This top image of Walker Brook is from September 2022, when Enbridge’s Line 3/93 had pumped a year’s worth of tar sands, yet this was the condition remaining in the valley. Enbridge had unknowingly* installed their pipeline into a surficial aquifer where it acted as a French drain, pulling water along the path of least resistance to Walker Brook below. This draining had eroded the hillside, including the soil around the pipeline, turning it to liquid, and opening a hole in the land. Just a month earlier, in late August, Waadookawaad Amikwag volunteers had confirmed the 4’ x 6’ hole in the corridor, directly above the pipeline.

The timber matting road leading to main roadways was soon re-installed, returning heavy equipment to the valley by December 2022. Winter would witness another round of failed remediation attempts by the Canadian pipeline company. When they packed up in February 2023, again removing their timber matting road, our team would discover water still bleeding profusely from the land. This March 2023 photo shows straw bales, erosion barriers, and webbed fiber matting - all tools Enbridge is hoping will keep holding this land together.

Over 10,000 years in the making, Enbridge plowed through this special valley in the space of a few weeks, disrupting the interconnected ecology of the millennia-old forested bogland of its trees and cutting the bog apart to allow insertion of Line 3/93.

State regulatory agencies have yet to identify this damage site to the public.

Enbridge’s multiple efforts have all failed to remediate this place. Layers of remediation work have compounded issues in this valley and drone footage from Fall 2023 confirmed ongoing water flowing from the eastern slope of this valley.

This is one example of wetlands that were severely degraded and cannot be fully restored. There are many other examples along the pipeline route.

*Unknowingly… only because Enbridge refused to conduct basic geologic investigation before construction in this valley, and because the State of Minnesota regulators did not demand such an investigation. State regulators evidence a pattern of not holding applicants responsible with the phrasing “…to the extent practicable,” which allows almost any environmental concerns for a project to be dismissed as “impractical”. Enbridge was not prepared for – or, was recklessly indifferent to – the geologic complexity they encountered. Waadookawaad Amikwag suspects that Enbridge knew there would be problems, because all other pipeline construction was done before they attempted this last “link” in the route. Any problems here and it would be effectively too late to demand a re-route.