Native Americans join lawsuit against Enbridge and Tarsands

Friday, November 14, 2014
Native Americans join lawsuit against Enbridge and Tarsands

Lawsuit Targets Secretive Plan to Ramp up Tar Sands Oil Shipments in Alberta Clipper Pipeline

On November l2, 2014, Honor the Earth joined with the White Earth Nation, the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Indigenous Environmental Network in a lawsuit against the US State Department. The suit challenges the State Department’s intent to issue a permit to the Enbridge Company to bring tar sands oil into the US prior to completion of an Environmental Impact Statement. The pipeline proposal -- a switch of line between the new Alberta Clipper pipeline the sixty year-old line Three causes what plaintiffs call a “mockery of federal law” by allowing the company to bypass regulation and use an older line to move the oil.

While most national attention has been on the proposed Keystone Pipeline, the Alberta Clipper line is the largest tar sands pipeline crossing into the US border, and is not able to be at full capacity because the State Department announced in 2012 that it would prepare a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement. No EIS has been completed.

The Alberta tar sands are an example of what is termed “extreme oil” derived from a very complex, and ecologically destructive process which has had devastating impacts on the First Nations of the Athabascan Chipewayan, Cree and Dene people of the north. Dramatic increases in cancer and major health problems are attributed to their villages and their hunting and fishing territories being devastated by tar sands extractions.

Tar sands oil uses 3.1 barrels of fresh water for every barrel of oil produced, and has created the largest lake of toxic water in the world, and is considered the most damaging oil in climate change. Because of the highly controversial expansion of tar sands oil, the campaign to oppose the Alberta Clipper expansion has grown significantly in the Great Lakes Region. In fact, with Keystone XL still delayed, Alberta Clipper is widely seen as the most important and immediate pipeline battle, and thus much of the U.S. tar sands campaign has been shifting its focus to this project. With the mid term elections, it is likely that both pipelines will be on the front burner.

More:
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.ca/2014/11/native-americans-joins-lawsuit-against.html