Enbridge has started work on a reroute of its aging Line 5 pipeline around the Bad River Band of Lake Superior’s reservation in northern Wisconsin, moving ahead after a long series of legal challenges. The company began clearing trees in the right-of-way for the new segment Tuesday, Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner said, even as two newly filed lawsuits still could delay the project.
Line 5 is an Enbridge system that has transported crude oil and natural gas liquids between Superior, Wisconsin, and Sarnia, Ontario since 1953. In Wisconsin, about 12 miles of the pipeline runs across the Bad River reservation along Lake Superior’s shores, which has been at the center of the dispute.
The Bad River Band sued Enbridge in 2019 to force the company to remove the pipeline section from the reservation, arguing that the land easements allowing operation expired six years earlier and that the 73-year-old line was prone to a catastrophic spill. The litigation, along with further challenges, kept the reroute tied up for years.
In 2023, a judge ordered Enbridge to complete removal of the reservation segment by this June. The Bad River and conservation groups pressed for a broader shutdown of the line, and they continued to pursue legal obstacles that slowed progress on the company’s plan to reroute.
A key step came when an administrative law judge upheld Enbridge’s state wetlands permit on Feb. 13, clearing what the company described as the project’s last legal hurdle. After that decision, Kellner said, Enbridge crews began clearing trees in the new segment’s right-of-way.
Even with the permit upheld, the start of work does not end the legal fight. The Bad River and a coalition of environmental groups filed separate actions in Iron County Circuit Court this month seeking an immediate stay of the wetlands permit, saying regulators underestimated the damage reroute construction will cause.
Elizabeth Arbuckle, the Bad River tribal chair, said in a statement announcing the tribe’s filing that, “The Bad River watershed is not an oil pipeline corridor that exists to serve Enbridge’s profits. It is our homeland. We must protect it.” Kellner, responding to the stay request, said seeking a stay is not reasonable given that the project has been heavily scrutinized and that the public needs uninterrupted energy. She also said the pipeline serves 10 refineries and propane production facilities that serve millions of people across the Midwest and Great Lakes region.
The courts have not yet ruled on either of the new stay requests. The article reported that a hearing is scheduled in the Bad River’s case for Thursday.
Line 5 remains in another controversy in Michigan involving a 4.5-mile segment beneath the Straits of Mackinac that opponents say could rupture and trigger an ecological disaster. Enbridge has proposed encasing that portion in a protective tunnel and said it still needs additional permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy before construction can begin. Neither agency had issued approvals as of the report, though the corps said it has fast-tracked permitting under the authority of President Donald Trump’s 2025 energy emergency executive order. Meanwhile, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel have filed lawsuits seeking to void the easements that allow the line to operate in the straits, and a federal judge blocked Whitmer’s action in December; the governor has appealed to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals while the U.S. Supreme Court weighs whether Nessel’s lawsuit belongs in state or federal court.