Lawsuits challenge Enbridge pipeline

John Myers, April 13, 2009, Duluth News Tribune -- A Minnesota environmental group filed four lawsuits Monday in three different courts trying to stop an oil pipeline across northern Minnesota.

The Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy filed the suits in St. Louis and Ramsey county district courts and with the Minnesota Court of Appeals against a new Enbridge Energy Partners pipeline from Canadian oil fields to Superior.
The suits are against the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, which last year approved the need for the pipelines and which has approved most of the pipeline’s route.

MCEA says the state commission wrongly approved the pipeline, both because the oil isn’t needed and because an adequate environmental review was not conducted first.

The group claims that much of the oil will come from tar sands mined in northern Canada, a process that not only disturbs the forest but which uses more energy to extract the oil and produces more carbon pollution than traditional oil sources. Carbon is the primary human-caused pollution that most climate scientists say is spurring global climate change.
The group claims allowing the tar-sands soil into the state will increase pollution and will violate state policies to reduce carbon emissions as well as the state’s environmental policy act.

“We don’t need this crude — what we need is low-carbon alternatives. Minnesotans don’t want tar in our tanks,’’ said Kevin Reuther, MCEA’s legal director, in a statement. “This is the equivalent of the Department of Health approving a brand-new state-of-the-art cigarette factory to ensure that generations to come will remain addicted to tobacco.”
An Enbridge spokeswoman did not immediately return a reporter’s phone call Monday.

The PUC granted certificates of need and routing permits for two pipelines, Enbridge’s Alberta Clipper project to bring tar sands oil into the U.S. and the Southern Lights line to deliver light hydrocarbons, called diluent, back up to the Canadian oil fields. The proposed pipelines cover about 285 miles in northern Minnesota from Clearbrook to Superior. Other lines continue from Clearbrook to Canada and from Superior to Illinois.