News Release: there have been arrests of water protectors in Fond Du Lac . Direct action was forced in order try and prevent damage to a pipeline, due to poor practices, which would ultimately lead to further environmental damage.
Late Monday afternoon, three water protectors were arrested for blocking construction of Line 3. Two of the protestors were arrested while blocking the entrance to the site, while the third, Jeff Nichols, climbed onto a section of the pipeline dangling over a trench. Jeff sat on the pipe for nearly five hours, preventing workers from putting the pipe onto frozen sand bags which would have damaged the structural integrity of the pipeline.
In a Facebook livestream from Camp Migizi, a water protector camp based out of Fond Du Lac, Jeff shared that he felt compelled to act when he saw the workers were about to put the pipe into the ground onto frozen sand bags. In the livestream, it was also shared that OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, put out a mandate ordering Enbridge to not use frozen sandbags, as they force the pipe to bend, causing fractures and leading to spills.
On the livestream, Jeff can be heard saying,
“It’s not even a question. This one will leak. The sandbags are frozen. You guys have already received violations for that” while other protestors shouted “all pipelines leak.”
Line 3, if built, would cross over 200 hundred bodies of water in Northern Minnesota, including the Mississippi River. Enbridge itself is responsible for numerous oil spills in Minnesota, including the largest ever inland oil spill in North America when nearly 1.7 million barrels of crude oil spilled in Grand Rapids.
Contact: media@resistline3.org
For more information, contact Camp Migizi on Facebook.