The National Post reports in its Monday edition that U.S. Judge William Conley says Enbridge must pay the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa in Wisconsin more than $5-million in Line 5 profits and relocate the cross-border pipeline within the next three years. A Canadian Press dispatch to the Post reports that Judge Conley said in a decision Friday that a rupture would constitute a clear public nuisance under federal law. However, while the order affirms that Enbridge has been trespassing on the land since 2013, when certain permits for the 70-year-old pipeline were allowed to lapse, it stops short of causing "economic havoc" with an immediate shutdown. Judge Conley writes, "The use of trespass on a few parcels to drive the effective closure of all of Line 5 has always been about a tail wagging a much larger dog." In other words, he says there are "much larger public policy issues" surrounding cross-border pipelines that the band's arguments, while valid, lack the power to overcome. Those issues "involve not only the sovereign rights of the band, but the rights of multiple states and international relations between the United States and Canada." Enbridge is already making plans to reroute the line.
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