Enbridge’s pipeline construction in Minnesota ruptured an aquifer. Officials say it’s the 4th time

ST. PAUL, Minn. –

A fourth aquifer breach has been confirmed in northern Minnesota stemming from a Canadian oil firm’s building of an oil pipeline substitute within the area, state officers stated.

Officials with Enbridge Energy and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources confirmed to the Minneapolis Star Tribune that the breach occurred close to Moose Lake in Aitkin County. Officials stated Enbridge is working to repair the rupture, wherein the layer of earth above an aquifer is punctured, inflicting the water to leak to the floor and presumably introducing pollution.

It’s the fourth confirmed breach alongside the Line 3 pipeline route, which began working within the fall of 2021 and generated fierce opposition from environmental activists and Native American tribes. Last October, state regulators introduced that Enbridge would pay greater than $11 million for water high quality violations and the three earlier aquifer breaches.

An aquifer is a pure underground reserve of contemporary water able to being tapped by wells. Environmentalists say such groundwater reserves face a mess of threats from human populations, together with depletion from overuse, air pollution from agriculture and septic techniques and contamination from pipeline building and spills.

Groundwater on the Moose Lake breach is flowing to the floor at about 10 to fifteen gallons per minute, division officers stated. That’s “considerably lower” than the speed at which groundwater initially flowed from the opposite three breaks, the company stated.

Enbridge will submit a plan to appropriate the Moose Lake space injury and can implement it when it is accredited, firm spokeswoman Juli Kellner stated in an announcement. The aquifer breaches do not contain the pipe itself, she stated. It stems from sheet-metal piling pushed into the bottom used to strengthen the trenches that crews work in.