Tribes Slam US Army Corps for Approving Line 5 Tunnel

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers today issued a record of decision approving Canadian company Enbridge’s proposal to bore a four-mile tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac to house its Line 5 oil pipeline. Despite the federal agency’s approval, Enbridge cannot move forward with construction because Michigan’s Supreme Court recently ordered the Michigan Public Service Commission to re-do its analysis of the project. The Army Corps’ permit follows other state approvals granted last month by Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) under the leadership of Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

“In contrast to her public messages, Governor Whitmer has not stood up to Enbridge — in fact quite the opposite,” said Managing Attorney Debbie Chizewer. “But for her administration granting the EGLE permit, the Army Corps could not have given its approval today and put the profits of a private company above the protection of the Great Lakes.”

Under President Trump’s “National Energy Emergency” Executive Order, the US Army Corps has short-circuited its review of the tunnel’s impacts, prompting seven Michigan Tribes to withdraw as cooperating agencies last March.

“Our federal government has a solemn obligation to uphold and protect Treaty rights and is supposed to protect American waters and sacred spaces,” said Managing Attorney David Gover with the Native American Rights Fund (NARF). “Instead, the U.S. Army Corps just rubber-stamped a Canadian oil project that desecrates a Tribal sacred space and threatens to pollute the Great Lakes.”

Enbridge’s proposal to run a hazardous liquids pipeline through a confined underground tunnel has never been attempted anywhere else in the world. It would turn the Straits of Mackinac – a sacred site of creation for Anishinaabe tribes – into a construction zone for more than six years, threatening permanent destruction.

“Today’s decision by the U.S. Army Corps is more than a procedural failure, it is a profound breach of the United States’ treaty trust responsibility to Tribal Nations,” said Bay Mills Indian Community President Whitney Gravelle. “Our treaties are solemn promises that carry the highest legal and moral obligation, yet the Corps cast that aside. They disregarded our treaty rights, ignored the information we provided through consultation, and pushed past cultural resource obligations under the manufactured excuse of an ‘energy emergency.’ Instead of honoring the commitments embedded in the 1836 Treaty of Washington, they chose to treat Tribal Nations as an obstacle rather than as sovereigns whose rights must be honored – all to advance Enbridge’s interests at the expense of our homelands, our waters, and the Great Lakes. This is a profound breach of the United States’ trust responsibility, and it is shameful.”

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