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Image: Police in riot gear face off environmental activists at the Line 3 pipeline pumping station near the Itasca State Park, Minnesota in the summer of 2021. Kerem Yucel / AFP via Getty Images, via Grist
The Canadian oil pipeline giant Enbridge will pay Wisconsin law enforcement for riot suits, training, and hours spent policing protests, according to an agreement approved by two counties last week. The secretive arrangement offers an uncapped funding source to local sheriffs as the company prepares for disruptive, Indigenous-led resistance to the controversial Line 5 reroute.
Last Tuesday, Enbridge began construction on a 41-mile segment of Line 5, which carries around 540,000 barrels of oil and natural gas liquids daily from a transfer point in Superior, Wisconsin, to Sarnia, Ontario. The pipeline is designed to send fossil fuels from Canada’s tar sands region and the Bakken fracking fields to U.S. refineries before shipping much of the refined products back into Canada.
The proposed reroute comes after the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa fought for years to force Enbridge to shut down an existing 12-mile segment of the pipeline that passes through the tribe’s reservation. After several of the pipeline’s easements expired in 2013, the Bad River Band declined to renew them over concerns about a potential oil spill. Enbridge continued operating, and in 2023, a federal judge ruled that the company was illegally trespassing and ordered it to shut down the reservation segment by June 2026.
Enbridge appealed, and last Friday, the same judge that issued the trespass decision lifted the June deadline until the appeal is resolved. Bad River’s leaders want the pipeline stopped altogether, arguing that the reroute would surround the reservation and threaten the tribe’s treaty-protected watershed and wild rice beds. Tribal nations have also joined the state of Michigan in demanding that a separate section of corroding Line 5 pipeline be shut down under the Straits of Mackinac, which connects Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. However, under President Donald Trump, the federal government has repeatedly weighed in in favor of keeping Line 5 oil flowing. Shortly after taking office, Trump declared a national energy emergency to speed up the development of fossil fuel projects. Under this directive, the Army Corps of Engineers expedited a permit last spring to build a tunnel for Line 5 under the straits. The move prompted several tribal nations in the region to withdraw from pipeline talks in protest.
Anticipating significant public pushback against the reroute construction, Enbridge and the Wisconsin Counties Association negotiated the Public Safety Expense Reimbursement Agreement. The agreement is designed specifically to address the cost of potential protests, allowing police and public safety agencies along Line 5 to submit invoices for an array of expenses. Eligible costs include daily patrols of the construction area, crowd control, police coordination with Enbridge, education programs, and Enbridge trainings on “human trafficking and cultural awareness”—an attempt to thwart transient construction workers who use trafficked women for sex. Firearms, tasers, K-9 units, and recording devices will not be reimbursed.
An account manager appointed by the Wisconsin Counties Association will review the reimbursement requests before Enbridge pays the police via an escrow account.
At Ashland County’s Board of Supervisors meeting last week, about a dozen people spoke out against the account. Riley Clave, a community member, told the board the agreement “would be turning our public service into private security.” Another commenter, Soren Bvennehe, called the agreement “a blatant conflict of interest,” arguing that paying the sheriff’s office incentivizes preferential treatment for the company.
Wenipashtaabe Gokee, a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, raised concerns about the disproportionate policing of Indigenous people in the area. She noted that the Ashland County Sheriff’s Office, which would be tasked with policing Indigenous-led protests against Line 5, already has a presence on the Bad River Reservation—in 2017, her 14-year-old nephew, Jason Pero, was killed by an Ashland County sheriff’s deputy in front of his home. “We’re already targeted,” Gokee said during the hearing. She also pointed to a 2019 state law making it a felony to trespass on the property of oil pipeline companies, part of a wave of anti-protest legislation passed nationwide following the 2016 Dakota Access pipeline protests.
Those in favor of the agreement repeatedly expressed their desire to avoid raising taxes or using sparse county resources to police the pipeline. County officials asserted that they would rather have local law enforcement respond to protests than private security. Andy Phillips, a lawyer for the Wisconsin Counties Association, estimated the counties will face “millions” in pipeline-related public safety expenses. The agreement includes no cap on reimbursements and does not specify that the money has to come from Enbridge. “We didn’t care where it came from,” Phillips said, so long as the burden did not fall on taxpayers.
Bayfield County Sheriff Tony Williams noted his chief deputy is already making a list of equipment, including helmets and shields. “I think that cost was up to $60,000,” Williams said, adding, “I don’t know if it’s fair to put the cost back on the community and the taxpayers if we can get a billion-dollar company to pay us back.”
Ashland and Iron counties ultimately approved the agreement, while Bayfield County rejected it.
The approved agreement includes a clause stating that all communications regarding the reimbursements are highly confidential, citing unspecified risks to public health and safety. “The clause in the agreement is wildly over broad,” said Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, arguing that it looks like an attempt to “tip the balance” of the state’s public records laws.
Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner said, “Enbridge does not believe local communities and taxpayers should be saddled with these extra costs associated with Line 5 construction and offered a constructive solution.”
In Detroit, Michigan, Environmental and Native American activists rally to shut down the Enbridge Line 5 oil pipeline, which runs under the Straits of Mackinac. On the grounds that an oil leak would cause disastrous damage to the Great Lakes, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has revoked the 1953 easement which allowed the company to build the pipeline. Enbridge says it will ignore the governor’s order. Jim West / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images via Grist.
Funding arrangements like this emerged after the 2016 Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access pipeline, which cost North Dakota $38 million in policing and other protest-related bills. The state spent years in court attempting to get the federal government to pay the costs, even after Energy Transfer donated $15 million to offset the bill. In 2019, South Dakota, under then-governor Kristi Noem, drafted legislation to establish a protest-policing fund for the Keystone XL pipeline, before the project was canceled by the Biden administration.
The model was successfully tested in Minnesota during construction of Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline expansion. There, the state Public Utilities Commission established an Enbridge-funded escrow account that ultimately reimbursed $8.6 million to 97 public agencies for everything from energy drinks to zip ties and porta potties.
In the aftermath of Line 3, several people arrested during the protests pursued legal motions arguing that the escrow account created an unconstitutional police bias that violated their rights to due process.
While Minnesota’s escrow manager was state-appointed, Wisconsin’s manager will be appointed by the Wisconsin Counties Association — an organization that a judge ruled in 2014 is not subject to public records requests. The Wisconsin Counties Association did not reply to requests for comment.
Dawn Goodwin, a White Earth Nation member who worked with the nonprofit Indigenous Environmental Network to fight Line 3 in Minnesota, attended the recent Ashland County meeting. She said she watched trust in law enforcement deteriorate in counties that accepted Enbridge’s reimbursements. In her own county, however, the sheriff decided not to submit any invoices to the company.
“Our sheriff told me he took an oath to uphold the First Amendment,” Goodwin recalled. ”He held to that.”
