| Amid Extreme Heat and Drought, Line 3 Pipeline Construction Puts Water At Risk
Carrie Huff Chesnik, an Oneida tribal elder, clutched a Mason jar to her chest on the last leg of a 250-mile protest walk from northern Minnesota to the State Capitol. She spoke about the jar, filled from the headwaters of the Mississippi River near where Indigenous tribes are mounting fierce opposition to the Line 3 oil pipeline, as if it were a dear friend. Protests come in all sizes and iterations. The odyssey of the mason jar follows years of indigenous-led activism meant to elevate to public attention the ecological and cultural risks of the Line 3 oil pipeline and, ultimately, halt its construction. In its basic outlines, the Line 3 dispute adheres to much the same contours of citizen concerns about water and climate change, and developers’ dismissals of both, that have defined other battles to shut down new fossil fuel pipelines in the nation. In Minnesota, opponents cites a host of factors, including its potential violations of native treaty rights, the need to rapidly phase out fossil fuels to combat climate change, pipeline construction workers’ sexual violence against indigenous women, and one more: disagreement over water science and hydrology. But this is the summer when extreme heat, epic drought, and severe water scarcity converged to produce a water emergency in the West and upper Great Plains. Climate change and its source in fossil fuel production, transport, and combustion have added greater visibility to the clash over Line 3. | 