Water spills again from aquifer breached by northern Minnesota pipeline

Environmental advocates who have called attention to aquifer breaches from the construction of Enbridge Energy's Line 3 oil pipeline across Minnesota say they've found groundwater bubbling from a rupture that was supposed to have been fixed.

The news came Thursday as environmentalists and tribal members gathered at a boat launch on northern Minnesota's Big LaSalle Lake to memorialize the one-year anniversary of the aquifer break at LaSalle Creek, which flows through a marshy valley into the lake and eventually the Mississippi River.

The commemoration was led by White Earth citizen Dawn Goodwin, who co-founded RISE Coalition, an Indigenous women's environmental group. Goodwin said the breach site on LaSalle Creek looks "horrible."

"It's very heartbreaking because we warned them," she said in an interview. "We know that's irreparable damage to our aquifers. That's our source of drinking water."

The group released a seven-minute video about the accident that includes images from a flyover, narrated by geologist Laura Triplett of Gustavus Adolphus College.

The LaSalle Creek aquifer breach is one of three caused by Line 3 construction that the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) confirmed in March. Each breach involved the use of sheet piling to stabilize the walls of the trench for the pipe.

Pipeline operator Enbridge Energy said on its website that the LaSalle breach was grouted and fixed last November. But in response to questions raised by the environmentalists, the DNR confirmed Thursday that groundwater is again spilling at the LaSalle Creek repair site in Clearwater County.

The thermal imaging flyover by the White Earth Band of Ojibwe shows 45 spots along the 355-mile pipeline route where groundwater has been bubbling to the surface, the environmentalists say.

Beyond confirming the discharge at LaSalle Creek, DNR spokeswoman Gail Nosek said the agency couldn't discuss the situation because it's working on an "ongoing comprehensive enforcement action" against Enbridge.

Enbridge told the DNR about the groundwater spill July 11, the agency said, and the DNR instructed Enbridge to provide a plan for fixing it. The DNR said it expects that plan shortly.

The spill is flowing at about 20 gallons per minute, the DNR said. That's about one-fifth of the original flow from the breach.

The DNR said its own aerial survey and site visits have not confirmed any other aquifer breaches.

Jami Gaither, a member of the group Waadookawaad Amikwag, or Those Who Help Beaver, present at Thursday's gathering, said its members want an independent analysis of Line 3's groundwater problems.

Gaither said the group wants better solutions to the breaches than the company's current one, which is to inject a special grout mixture into the ground to plug the holes.

"We shouldn't just be crushing the land and shooting a bunch of concrete into it," said Gaither. Minnesotans need someone investigating the breaches "that understands the native American values of kinship with the land," she said.

"This isn't a sidewalk we're repairing," Gaither said.

The DNR said it intends to continue holding Enbridge accountable for restoring wetlands and fixing breaches. The agency also said that it has repeatedly expressed interest in reviewing the environmentalists' thermal imagery but has never received it.

"With the exception of today's public release on YouTube, none of the information has been provided to us," the DNR said.

The agency fined Enbridge more than $3.23 million in 2021 for violations related to a breach near the city of Clearbrook in Clearwater County, the first of the three confirmed breaches.

Enbridge spokeswoman Juli Kellner said the company is dedicated to resolving the LaSalle groundwater spill and working to prevent similar spills. She said the company has flown over and walked the Line 3 repeatedly "with state and tribal geologists, hydrologists, and the regulatory agencies." They are not aware of concerns at other locations, she said.

"Construction of Line 3 was overseen by trained environmental inspectors, independent third-party agency monitors and tribal monitors - all of which had the authority to stop construction," Kellner said.

In March, Enbridge and the DNR said their own aerial checks of Line 3 hadn't found any breaches beyond the three.

The White Earth Band, Minnesota's largest Native American tribe with about 20,000 members, has led a surveillance effort with the Sierra Club, Honor the Earth, MN350 and the RISE Coalition. Together they paid $52,000 in November to fly an aircraft outfitted with high-definition thermal imaging equipment to check for construction-related damage to the state's aquifers.

The DNR knows about the imagery but hasn't formally requested it, said Jeff Broberg, a geologist working with the group.

Asked why they haven't just given the imagery to the DNR, Broberg said it took a long time for the group to analyze the 1.2 terabytes of data. Plus, the group wants assurances that it won't be prevented from using the information should it become part of state investigation.

The group also is asking the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to investigate the breaches, Broberg said.