[News] Documents show how a pipeline company paid Minnesota millions to police protests

[Anti-Imperialist News]

grist.org
<https://grist.org/protest/enbridge-line-3-pipeline-minnesota-public-safety-escrow-account-invoices/>
Documents show how a pipeline company paid Minnesota millions to police
protests
Alleen Brown, John McCracken - February 9, 2023
------------------------------
[image: image.png]

*This story was published in partnership with the Center for Media and
Democracy <https://www.exposedbycmd.org/>.*

The morning of June 7, 2021, Sheriff’s Deputy Chuck Nelson of Beltrami
County, Minnesota, bought water and refreshments, packed his gear, and
prepared for what would be, in his own words, “a long day.” For over six
months, Indigenous-led opponents of the Line 3 project had been
participating in acts of civil disobedience to disrupt construction of the
tar sands oil pipeline, arguing that it would pollute water, exacerbate the
climate crisis, and violate treaties
<https://grist.org/food/line-3-pipeline-protests-enbridge-wild-rice-treaty-rights/>
with the Anishinaabe people. Officers like Nelson were stuck in the middle
of a conflict, sworn to protect the rights of both the pipeline company
Enbridge and its opponents.

Nelson drove 30 minutes to Hubbard County, where he and officers from 14
different police and sheriff’s departments confronted around 500
protesters, known as water protectors, occupying a pipeline pump station.
The deputy spent his day detaching people who had locked themselves to
equipment as fire departments and ambulances stood by. A U.S. Customs and
Border Protection helicopter swooped low
<https://theintercept.com/2021/06/08/line-3-pipeline-helicopter-dhs-protest/>,
kicking dust over the demonstrators, and officers deployed a sound cannon
known as a Long Range Acoustic Device in attempts to disperse the crowd.

By the end of the day, 186 people had been detained in the largest
mass-arrest of the opposition movement. Some officers stuck around to
process arrests, while others stopped for snacks at a gas station or
ordered Chinese takeout before crashing at a nearby motel.

These latter details might be considered irrelevant, except for the fact
that the police and emergency workers’ takeout, motel rooms, riot gear,
gas, wages, and trainings were paid for by one side of the dispute — the
fossil fuel company building the pipeline, which spent more than $79,000 on
policing that day alone.

When the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission gave Enbridge permission
<https://theintercept.com/2020/11/24/enbridge-line-3-pipeline-protests-minnesota/>
in 2020 to replace its corroded Line 3 pipeline and double its capacity, it
included an unusual condition in the permit: Enbridge would pay the police
as they responded to the acts of civil disobedience that the project would
surely spark. The pipeline company’s money would be funneled to law
enforcement
<https://theintercept.com/2021/07/07/line-3-pipeline-minnesota-counterinsurgency/>
and other government agencies via a Public Safety Escrow Account managed by
the state.

By the time construction finished in fall 2021, prosecutors had filed 967
criminal cases related to pipeline protests, and police had submitted
hundreds of receipts and invoices to the Enbridge-funded escrow account,
seeking reimbursement. Through a public records request, Grist and the
Center for Media and Democracy have obtained and reviewed every one of
those invoices, providing the most complete picture yet of the ways the
pipeline company paid for the arrests of its opponents — and much more.

>From pizza and “Pipeline Punch” energy drinks, to porta potties, riot
suits, zip ties, and salaries, Enbridge poured a total of $8.6 million into
97 public agencies, from the northern Minnesota communities that the
pipeline intersected to southern counties from which deputies traveled
hours to help quell demonstrations.

By far the biggest set of expenses reimbursed from the Enbridge escrow
account was over $5 million for wages, meals, lodging, mileage, and other
contingencies as police and emergency workers responded to protests during
construction. Over $1.3 million each went toward equipment and planning,
including dozens of training sessions. Enbridge also reimbursed nearly a
quarter million dollars for the cost of responding to pipeline-related
human trafficking and sexual violence.

[image: A treemap shows Enbridge's reimbursements to agencies across
Minnesota, amounting to over $8.6 million.]
Grist / Jessie Blaeser

Reporters for Grist and the Center for Media and Democracy reviewed more
than 350 records requested from the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission,
pulling out totals described in invoices and receipts and dividing them
into categories such as equipment, wages, and training. Each agency had its
own method for tracking expenses, with varying levels of specificity. In
cases where reporters were unable to cleanly disentangle different types of
expenses, those expenses were categorized as “other/multiple.” Generally,
totals should be considered conservative estimates for each category.

The $79,000 that Enbridge paid for the single day of arrests on June 7,
which doesn’t include much of the Enbridge-funded equipment and training
many officers relied on, displays the wide range of activities and agencies
Enbridge’s money touched. The attorney’s office of Hubbard County, where
the protest took place, even attempted to get Enbridge to reimburse $27,000
in prosecution expenses. In other words, the area’s top arbiter of justice
assumed that Enbridge would be covering the cost of pursuing charges
against hundreds of water protectors. (The state-appointed escrow account
manager denied the request.)

Some of the most surprising Enbridge invoices were from institutions and
officials associated with protecting Minnesota’s environmental resources
and preserving a balance between industry and the public interest. No
agency received more escrow account money than the Minnesota Department of
Natural Resources, or DNR, which is also one of the primary agencies
monitoring Line 3 for environmental harms. Of the $2.1 million that the DNR
received, the funds were mainly used to respond to protests and train state
enforcement officers about how to wrangle protesters, in some cases before
construction had even begun. Conservation officers joined police on the
front lines of protests, on the pipeline company’s dime.

[image: A lollipop chart shows the top agencies to receive reimbursements
from Enbridge. The Minnesota Dept. of Natural Resources was the top
recipient at over $2 million.]
Grist / Jessie Blaeser

The Aitkin County-run Long Lake Conservation Center
<https://theintercept.com/2021/07/07/line-3-pipeline-minnesota-counterinsurgency/>,
one of the oldest environmental education centers in the U.S., provided
facilities to police to the tune of over $40,000, which the sheriff’s
office paid using Enbridge funds. And a public safety liaison hired to
coordinate among Enbridge, the Public Utilities Commission, and local
officials was paid $120,000 in salary and benefits by the pipeline company
over a year and a half.

The invoices also document, in unusual detail, the connection between
fossil fuel megaproject construction and violence against women: Enbridge
reimbursed a nonprofit organization for the cost of hotel rooms for women
who had reportedly been assaulted by Line 3 workers. The pipeline company
also helped pay for two sex trafficking stings conducted by the Minnesota
Human Trafficking Investigative Task Force, leading to the arrest of at
least four Line 3 pipeline workers.

The state of Minnesota also considered police public relations to be
expenses eligible for Enbridge funding. John Elder, at the time
spokesperson for the Minneapolis Police Department, put out police press
releases and responded to journalist queries on behalf of the Northern
Lights Task Force, which was set up to coordinate emergency response
agencies throughout the protests. Enbridge ultimately reimbursed the St.
Louis County Sheriff’s Office for 331 hours of his work at a wage of $80
per hour. (St. Louis County Sheriff Gordon Ramsay said he was not in office
during pipeline construction and could not comment on Line-3-related work,
and Elder did not respond to requests for comment.)

A year earlier, Elder had handled Minneapolis police PR when one of the
city’s officers killed George Floyd, sparking an unprecedented wave of
nationwide protests. Elder was behind the notorious press release stating
that Floyd had “physically resisted officers” and died after he “appeared
to be suffering medical distress.” Hours later, a bystander video went
viral, showing that the medical distress followed an officer pressing his
knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes. Fallout from the press
release did not stop law enforcement agencies from choosing Elder to lead
officials’ public relations surrounding the Line 3 protests.

Water protectors contend that the state of Minnesota’s arrangement with
Enbridge trampled their constitutional rights*.* With 97 criminal cases
unresolved across the state, five defendants in Aitkin County are pursuing
motions arguing that the escrow account created an unconstitutional police
and prosecutor bias that violated their rights to due process and equal
protection under the law. They want the charges dismissed. Attorneys with
the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund’s Center for Protest Law and
Litigation previously used the defense against charges filed by Hubbard
County that were ultimately dismissed. They’re now preparing a separate
civil lawsuit challenging the use of the escrow account on constitutional
grounds.

Winona LaDuke, an Anishinaabe activist and founder of the Indigenous
environmental nonprofit Honor the Earth, is among those arguing in court
that charges should be thrown out. Aitkin County, the jurisdiction behind
the allegations she’s fighting, was reimbursed $6,007.70 for wages and
benefits on just one of the days she was arrested. LaDuke believes the
money amped up the police response.

“They were far more aggressive with us, far more intent on finding any
possible reason to stop somebody,*” *she said. “Law enforcement is supposed
to protect and serve the people. They work for Enbridge.”

LaDuke added that she believes the DNR’s Enbridge money represents a
“conflict of interest.” In addition to its role in monitoring the
pipeline’s full Minnesota route, the agency is directly responsible for the
ecological health of 35 miles of state lands and 66 waterways
<https://files.dnr.state.mn.us/features/line3/decisions/cross-public-land-decision.pdf>
where Line 3 crosses — and where Anishinaabe people have distinct treaty
rights
<https://grist.org/food/line-3-pipeline-protests-enbridge-wild-rice-treaty-rights/>
to hunt, gather, and travel. To date, the DNR and the Minnesota Pollution
Control Agency have charged
<https://files.dnr.state.mn.us/features/line3/dnr-mpca-joint-news-release-line-3-enforcement-10-17-2022.pdf>
Enbridge over $11 million in penalties for violations that include dozens
of drilling fluid spills
<https://grist.org/equity/oil-is-now-flowing-on-line-3-the-fight-to-stop-it-isnt-over/>
and three aquifer breaches
<https://www.mprnews.org/story/2022/08/06/line-3-aquifer-breach-is-leaking-more-groundwater>
that occurred during construction. LaDuke and others have criticized the
agency’s response to the incidents, noting that it took months to publicly
disclose the first of the aquifer breaches.

Juli Kellner, an Enbridge spokesperson, emphasized that the escrow account
was operated by an independent manager who reported to the Public Utilities
Commission, not the oil company. Kellner said the account was created to
relieve communities from the increased financial burden that public safety
agencies accrued when responding to protests.

“Enbridge provided funding but had no decision-making authority on
reimbursement requests,” she said.

Ryan Barlow, the Public Utilities Commission’s general counsel, said the
commission had no comment about the appropriateness of specific
expenses: “If expenses met the conditions of the permit they were approved;
if they did not, they were not approved.”

In a statement, the DNR said that receiving reimbursement from Enbridge
does not constitute a conflict of interest: “At no time were state law
enforcement personnel under the control or direction of Enbridge, and at no
time did the opportunity for reimbursement for our public safety work in
any way influence our regulatory decisions.”

When asked why its officers were trained how to use chemical weapons ahead
of the protests, the DNR said their peace officers’ overall mission is
“protecting Minnesota’s natural resources and the people who use them” and
that such equipment, while occasionally necessary, “is not used as part of
conservation officers’ routine work.”

Hubbard County Sheriff Cory Aukes said his agency’s response was dictated
by the protestors and water protectors. “If they want to block roads,
threaten workers, and cause $100,000 worth of damage to Enbridge equipment,
well, we have a job to do, and we did it,” Aukes said, adding that Enbridge
is a taxpayer that officers have a duty to protect. “Enbridge is a big
taxpayer in Hubbard county and we would be doing an injustice if we didn’t
support them as well.”

“We were in the middle,” added Aitkin County Sheriff Dan Guida. “There were
probably times when it seems like we dealt with water protectors in a more
criminal way, but they were the ones breaking the law.” He added that
officers had no knowledge of the reimbursement plan and that the funds
spared taxpayers the cost of policing the pipeline.

Long Lake Conservation Center manager Dave McMillan, on the other hand,
said he knew the money the Aitkin County Sheriff’s Office paid his
organization for police officer lodging would come from Enbridge. “My
concern was not wanting to become a pawn or a player in this political
battle. In the same token, we said if any of the organizations that were
protesting said they wanted to come here and use our facilities, we would
have said yes,” he said. Enbridge’s connection to the facility runs even
deeper: The company’s director of tribal engagement sits on the board of
the Long Lake Conservation Foundation, which helps fund the county-run
facility.

With energy infrastructure fights brewing over liquid natural gas terminals
in the Southeast, lithium mining in the West, and the Enbridge-operated
Line 5 pipeline in Wisconsin
<https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/wisconsin/2022/09/08/federal-judge-rules-enbridges-line-5-can-remain-operation/8020701001/>
and Michigan, the ongoing legal cases that have ensnared the water
protectors will help decide whether or not the public safety escrow account
will be replicated elsewhere.

“Our concern is that this now will become the model for deployment
nationwide against any community that is rising up against corporate
abuse,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, the director of the Center for
Protest Law and Litigation, who is representing some of the water
protectors. “It becomes very easy to sell this to the public as a savings
for taxpayers, when instead what they’re doing is selling their police
department to serve the pecuniary interests of a corporation.”

Long before Line 3 construction began, Anishinaabe-led water defenders
promised they would rise up if the expanded pipeline was permitted. Members
of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission warily looked west to North
Dakota, where in 2016 and 2017 public agencies spent $38 million policing
massive protests led by members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against
construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. With global concerns about
climate change and biodiversity reaching a fever pitch, building an oil
pipeline now came with a hefty civil disobedience bill, and the
commissioners did not want taxpayers to foot it.

According to the pipeline permit, finalized in 2020, whenever a Minnesota
public safety agency spent money on almost anything related to Line 3, they
could submit an invoice, and Enbridge would pay it. Nonprofits responding
to drug and human trafficking were also eligible for grants from the
account. To create a layer of separation between police and the Enbridge
money, the state hired an account manager to decide which invoices would be
fulfilled.

Minnesota wasn’t the only state considering this kind of account. In 2019,
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem passed a law
<https://theintercept.com/2019/05/23/pipeline-protest-laws-louisiana-south-dakota/>
designed to establish “the next generation model of funding pipeline
construction.” The law created a fund for law enforcement and emergency
managers responding to pipeline protests, paid partly by new rioting
penalties, but also with as much as $20 million from the company behind the
pipeline. Noem’s office collaborated on the legislation with TransCanada,
now known as TC Energy, which was preparing to build the controversial
Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. But with Keystone XL defunct after
President Joe Biden pulled a key permit in 2021, only Minnesota would have
the opportunity to fully test the new model.

Even beforeLine 3 received its final permit on November 30, 2020, more than
$1 million in reimbursement-eligible expenses had been spent*.* Sheriffs’
offices were already buying riot gear and conducting crowd control
trainings in 2016 and 2017, in anticipation of the protests.

Key to coordinating it all was the Northern Lights Task Force, established
in September 2018 and consisting of law enforcement and other public
officials from 16 counties along the pipeline route or otherwise hosting
Enbridge infrastructure, as well as representatives from nearby
reservations and state agencies. Task force members met at least a dozen
times before construction began, the invoices show, and at times Enbridge
representatives joined. It didn’t necessarily matter, however, whether
Enbridge was physically in the room, because the company’s money was always
there: For the law enforcement agencies that requested it, the corporation
paid wages and overtime for each Northern Lights Task Force meeting
attended.

David Olmstead, a retired Bloomington police commander appointed by the
Minnesota Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management to
fulfill the duties of the Line 3 public safety liaison, coordinated between
Enbridge and public officials. Enbridge reimbursed the homeland security
agency Olmstead’s salary and benefits as well as more than $20,000 in
lodging expenses that Olmstead charged to a credit card, which included a
room at Duluth’s Fairfield Inn that was rented for two straight months at
the height of protests in June and July 2021, for a nightly rate of $165.

Olmstead, who did not respond to requests for comment, helped set up a
network of emergency operations centers to be activated when protests
kicked off. He also worked with task force members as they arranged dozens
of training sessions. Although a large proportion focused on crowd control
tactics, others covered techniques for dismantling lock-downs, responding
to weapons of mass destruction, policing sex trafficking, upholding the
constitution, understanding Native American culture, and using lessons
learned from policing the Dakota Access Pipeline. Public officials spent
over $950,000 of Enbridge’s money on training expenses, including meals,
lodging, mileage, training fees, and wages.

Three quarters of the Enbridge training money went to the Department of
Natural Resources. The agency’s enforcement division is not only
responsible for upholding environmental laws and ticketing deviant poachers
and recreational vehicle drivers, but it also has full police powers on
state lands. While riot control may not be in the typical job description
of a Minnesota conservation officer, previously known as a game warden,
dozens of them trained to control crowds and use less-lethal chemical
weapons.

The Enbridge fund wasn’t supposed to be primarily for stuff. To limit
purchases, Public Utilities Commission members added language in the permit
stipulating that public agencies could only use it to buy personal
protective equipment, or PPE.

Over half of PPE funds went toward riot gear valued at more than $700,000,
which was purchased from police equipment vendors like Streicher’s and
Galls. For 13 county and city police forces, that meant more than $5,000 in
riot suits, shields, and gas masks. The Beltrami County Sheriff’s Office
took over $70,000 for riot gear, and the Polk County Sheriff’s Office more
than $50,000. (Neither office responded to requests for comment.) However
it was state agencies that received more than half of the Enbridge
reimbursements for crowd control equipment: more than $200,000 for the
Minnesota State Patrol, and over $170,000 for the Department of Natural
Resources.

[image: Bar chart with log scale shows reimbursements from Enbridge for
equipment cost, specifically riot gear.]
Grist / Jessie Blaeser

Enbridge also covered more than $325,000 in clothing — mostly cold weather
apparel — as well as over $55,000 for hand, foot, and body warmers. Even
the identification patches worn on many deputies’ lapels were paid for by
Enbridge — totaling more than $7,000. Another $2,000 went toward porta
potty rentals, and over $12,000 more toward gear to protect police as they
detached protesters who had locked themselves to equipment, including face
shields and flame-proof blankets to guard against flying sparks.

Enbridge paid not only for the time the Sheriff’s deputies took to arrest
water protectors and bind their hands behind their backs, but also for the
handcuffs themselves, which were dubbed PPE and paid for by the pipeline
company. The state of Minnesota approved more than $12,500 in Enbridge
funds for zip ties and handcuffs.

“Less lethal” weapons did not count as personal protective equipment, the
account manager decided, to the frustration of some law enforcement
leaders. However, even though Enbridge couldn’t buy these weapons, the
company did cover trainings on how to use them. Several trainings were
provided by the tear gas manufacturer Safariland
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/arts/whitney-warren-kanders-resigns.html>,
costing thousands of dollars. Enbridge also reimbursed over $260,000 worth
of gas masks and attachments, including filters for tear gas, presumably to
protect law enforcement from the chemicals they themselves would be
deploying.

It wasn’t necessarily the counties with the heaviest protest activity that
purchased the most equipment using Enbridge money. Among the top five local
law enforcement equipment buyers was the Freeborn County Sheriff’s Office,
located in one of Minnesota’s southernmost counties. The agency’s only
Enbridge-related expense besides equipment was for three officers to spend
a two- to three-day deployment assisting other agencies along the pipeline
route in the northern part of the state. (The office did not respond to
requests for comment.)

[image: A choropleth map of Minnesota shows counties where Enbridge
invested the most in local law enforcement. Some counties are in the
southern part of the state, far from the route of Line 3.]
Grist / Jessie Blaeser

2021 was a year of unprecedented protest among Northern Minnesota’s
pristine lakes and wetlands. Enbridge and law enforcement faced a drumbeat
of road blockades, lockdowns to pipeline equipment, marches through remote
prairie, and layered demonstrations combining Anishinaabe ceremony with
direct action tactics refined by generations of environmental and
Indigenous social movements.

The biggest Enbridge escrow account expense was more than $4.5 million in
wages, benefits, and overtime for officials responding to perceived
security threats during construction. More than just police and sheriff’s
offices were involved: The Department of Natural Resources’ largest
Enbridge-funded expense was $870,000 in personnel costs during construction
*.*

And it wasn’t just calls for service that Enbridge paid for. Dozens of
invoices mentioned “patrols,” where law enforcement would drive up and down
the pipeline route or surveil places occupied by pipeline opponents.

The Cass County Sheriff’s Office’s “proactive” safety patrol, described in
an invoice, may help explain why that agency expensed far more money for
response costs to the escrow account — over $900,000 — than any other
county or city, despite facing fewer mass demonstrations than other areas.

Like Cass, Hubbard County at times instituted patrols as well as mandatory
overtime shifts. The invoices confirm that sheriff’s deputies surveilled
the Namewag camp, which was located on private land and used both as a
space for Anishinaabe land-based practices and as a jumping off point for
direct action protests. “On 3/6 and 3/7, Hubbard County Deputies observed
roughly 30 previously unidentified vehicles arriving and periodically
leaving the Hinds Lake Camp (Ginew [sic] Collective Camp) in Straight River
Township, Hubbard County,” one invoice states.

It goes on to describe intelligence shared by an Enbridge employee,
detailing the movements of various groups of pipeline resistors. “Migizi
camp [another anti-Line 3 encampment] is empty at this time and
intelligence suggests Migizi and Portland XR [short for Extinction
Rebellion] are camping at a public campground,” the message from Enbridge
stated.

Enbridge also paid for gas that fueled officers’ cars, hotels they stayed
in when assisting other jurisdictions, and food they ate during shifts.
During both planning stages and periods of law enforcement action, Enbridge
covered at least $150,000 in meals, snacks, and drinks.The oil company
bought bagels, Domino’s pizza, McNuggets, Subway sandwich platters, a Dairy
Queen strawberry sundae, summer sausage, cheese curds, deep fried pickles,
Fritos, Gatorade, and energy drinks, including one called Pipeline Punch.

>From planning through construction, police and sheriff’s offices together
received at least $5.8 million in Enbridge funds. For state agencies, the
Enbridge funds represented a tiny proportion of massive budgets. However,
for the Cass County Sheriff’s Office, the Enbridge money added up to the
equivalent of more than 10 percent of the office’s 2021 budget. (The office
did not respond to requests for comment.) Five other sheriff’s offices
received reimbursements equivalent to over 5 percent of their annual
budgets.

The range of choices law enforcement agencies made regarding what to
invoice makes clear the discretionary nature of the Line 3 response.
Clearwater County is home to one of two places where Line 3 crosses the
Mississippi River and the site of a number of protests. Although 20 other
law enforcement agencies billed Enbridge for assisting the local sheriff,
Clearwater County billed nothing to the pipeline company.

The invoices also offer insight into the way the influx of pipeline workers
translated into incidents of human trafficking and assault. “Since the Line
3 Replacement project has come to our area, we have experienced an increase
in calls and need for services,” reads a grant application from the
nonprofit Violence Intervention Project, or VIP, based in Thief River
Falls, Minnesota, a community through which the pipeline passes, just
outside the Red Lake Reservation. “We have provided services to several
victims that have been assaulted by employees working on the Enbridge line
3 project.”

Enbridge reimbursed the organization for two hotel rooms for assault
survivors, since VIP’s shelter was full at the time. The company also paid
$42,000 worth of hazard pay for shelter workers during the 2021 winter, due
to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Enbridge’s biggest human trafficking grant recipient was Support Within
Reach, a northern Minnesota organization that works with survivors of
sexual violence, which used the money to pay for extra personnel costs
during pipeline construction and to buy emergency cell phones for advocates.

Additional funds also went to public agencies: Enbridge reimbursed
$43,551.96 to local law enforcement agencies working with the Minnesota
Human Trafficking Investigative Task Force. The documents describe at least
two multi-agency operations in Grand Rapids and Bemidji, and news reports
<https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/news/2-arrests-in-human-trafficking-sting-were-line-3-workers>
from the time confirm that they led to the arrest of four Line 3 workers.

Kellner, the Enbridge spokesperson, said that any employee caught and
arrested for human trafficking would be fired by the company. She added
that the four workers who were arrested were subcontractors, not direct
employees of the oil company, and were fired by the contractor Enbridge
worked with.

The Link, a nonprofit based in North Minneapolis, received $36,870 from
Enbridge and used it in part to assist the task force with sting operations
and support survivors who were found. Beth Holger, the organization’s chief
executive officer, said she did not feel conflicted about taking Enbridge’s
money, because it was going to victims: “Yes we took money from a
corporation that has caused harm, and we’re giving it to people to help
with that harm.”
Read Next
[image: Illustration: Two First Nations men in a red canoe harvesting wild
rice, with a pipeline under the water]

The $8.6 million in expenses covered by Enbridge by no means accounts for
the full public cost of responding to opposition to the Line 3 pipeline.

Several sheriffs’ offices anticipated thousands more Enbridge dollars than
they received. The sheriffs’ offices in Cass, Beltrami, and Polk counties
each attempted to expense around $25,000 of equipment that was ultimately
denied reimbursement.

Hubbard County Sheriff Cory Aukes said that it was unfortunate that the
Hubbard county attorney’s request for prosecutorial funds was denied by the
account manager, as Aukes sees the influx of charges and protestors as an
undue burden on the attorney’s office as well as the sheriff’s office. He
said that his agency had plenty of other expenses that weren’t covered.

He added that he believes it would be fiscally irresponsible to decline
Enbridge’s funds. “Shouldn’t they have to fund that? Shouldn’t they be
responsible to reimburse these additional costs?” Aukes asked.

To water protectors, however, the greatest costs of the pipeline are its
consequences for the climate, water, and the Canadian forest ecosystem
decimated by tar sands oil production. The nonprofit LaDuke co-founded,
Honor the Earth, issued its own invoice to Enbridge before the creation of
the escrow account, estimating that Line 3 would cost $266 billion annually
in environmental losses and social damages.

So far, she hasn’t received a response.

*Jessie Blaeser contributed data reporting, visualization, and analysis to
this story.*
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