Category: Legal News

Clean Wisconsin's legal team is making progress on a pair of major cases: fighting the Line 5 oil pipeline and opposing new gas plants.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources issued permits in November that would allow Canadian oil giant Enbridge to clear trees, dig trenches and fill wetlands to make way for a new 41-mile segment of its Line 5 pipeline.

The plant would release almost 3 million tons of greenhouse gases and 200 tons of other dangerous pollutants such as nitrogen oxide and volatile organic compounds every year in a neighborhood already burdened by industrial emissions

Calgary-based Enbridge, Inc. is seeking permits from the DNR that would allow the company to reroute its pipeline across 186 northern Wisconsin waterways and 612 acres of wetlands.

"This Court is setting out at the beginning, not the end, of a project to dismantle federal administrative law.

“Piece by piece, the U.S. Supreme Court is dismantling environmental regulation, taking apart the foundation of what has allowed us to clean up the air and water since the 1970s.

“This standard limits the amount of mercury, heavy metals, hydrochloric acid and other toxic pollutants that power plants are allowed to release into our environment, and there is no question we need those limits to be as strong as possible.

Enbridge’s pipeline disaster record includes the Kalamazoo River spill in 2010, the largest inland oil spill in US history.

"It’s important for people to understand these cases are not happening in a vacuum. They’re happening one after another on the Federal level and state level all across the country.

Lawsuit threatened to undermine a critical state water protection program that helps keep untreated animal waste out of Wisconsin’s waterways and drinking water.