Increased water pumping worries Line 3 pipeline opponents

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Opponents of Enbridge Energy's Line 3 oil pipeline project are worried about the potential impact of the company's plan to temporarily pump as much as 10 times more groundwater out of the construction area than once planned.

Enbridge originally got permission to pump about 510 million gallons of water from the trenches it's digging as it replaces the current, aging Line 3 pipeline along a partly new, 340-mile (545-kilometer) route across northern Minnesota.

But the Calgary, Alberta-based company encountered more groundwater than it anticipated, and earlier this month it obtained a permit from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to pump up to nearly 5 billion gallons (18.9 billion liters) for the remaining 145 miles (230 kilometers) of pipeline it has left to build, Minnesota Public Radio reported Thursday.

Indigenous and environmentalist groups fighting the project say the pumping could harm groundwater quality and potentially affect sensitive wetlands, lakes and streams along the route — including culturally and economically important wild rice beds — which are already stressed by drought.

“Given that we find ourselves in a moderate drought, with higher than average temperatures and lower than average precipitation, displacing this amount of water will have a direct detrimental impact on the 2021 wild rice crop,” wrote Michael Fairbanks and Alan Roy, tribal chairman and secretary-treasurer of the White Earth Nation.

But the Department of Natural Resources says it determined that the increased pumping won't threaten groundwater sustainability or have other harmful impacts on natural resources.

The agency’s permit allows Enbridge to pump shallow groundwater only from the construction area, not from lakes or wetlands, said Randall...