The Bad River Band is suing to protect its wild rice from an oil pipeline

Around August of each year, when temperatures swell in the Great Lakes region, wild rice — or manoomin in the Ojibwe language — begins to flower. Rice stalks can grow as high as 10 feet in the shallow waters, and to harvest, sticks and poles are used to knock seeds loose into boats or canoes. The harvest is critical each year to the Ojibwe.

But those ricing waters are under threat as the Canadian oil transport company Enbridge looks to reroute its controversial pipeline, Line 5, through prime harvesting areas. Now, the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, one of six Ojibwe bands in northern Wisconsin, has filed a lawsuit against the United States Army Corps of Engineers, or USACE, to stop construction.

“For hundreds of years, and to this day, the Band’s ancestors and members have lived, hunted, fished, trapped, gathered, and engaged in traditional activities in the wetlands and waters to be crossed by the project,” the lawsuit says.

In October, USACE granted Enbridge a permit to build a 41-mile addition to Line 5 in order to circumvent the Bad River reservation, but Earthjustice, a nonprofit litigation organization representing the tribe, argues the permit failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act. Earthjustice says the pipeline will cross waterways that flow onto the Bad River Reservation and leaks would threaten the watershed and ecosystem, needed for wild rice harvesting and fishing. After the largest inland oil spill from Enbridge’s pipelines in the U.S. in 2010 — flooding more than a million gallons into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan — the largest spill in Wisconsin’s history happened last year. The company reported around 69,000 gallons of oil spilled onto the ground near a rural town in the south of the state. Initially, the spill was reported as two gallons; it was a month before the public officially knew the spill’s size. 

Line 5 has operated for more than 70 years and has become a major legal battle for multiple tribal nations in the Great Lakes region. During the 1950s, for the Lakehead Pipeline, the company fitted 12 miles of pipeline across the 124,655-acre reservation to transport oil from western Canada to eastern Canada. Despite the treaty of 1854 that established permanent reservation territory and the treaty of 1842, cementing the right to hunt, gather, and fish, the company did not initiate talks with the tribe on pipeline siting. 

In 2019, the Bad River Band sued Enbridge to cease operations on their land, ordering the company to remove its pipeline from the reservation. In 2023, a federal judge backed the nation, ruling that the company had three years to remove its property from the reservation and pay a $5.1 million fine for trespassing. The tribe said the proposed 41-mile addition would impact at least 70 different waterways as Enbridge will need to use explosives and horizontal drilling to build the extension.

“Oil and gas contribute to pollution in a number of ways, and the Trump administration is focused on energy dominance,” said Gussie Lord, a member of the Oneida Nation and an attorney at Earthjustice. “It’s cut out renewable energy from the equation to the extent it can, and it just really feels like a backward-looking playbook to me.” 

Last year, under the Biden administration, the USACE conducted an environmental assessment on the proposed route rather than an environmental impact study. Environmental assessments allow for faster review, while environmental impact studies are more thorough and require more time and resources to evaluate a project’s impact. They also allow for consultation with tribal nations to determine if a project violates treaty rights, cultural resources, or access to clean water.

In neighboring Michigan, Enbridge is also up against tribal nations and state officials in order to operate a nearly 5-mile pipeline segment under the Great Lakes to replace a 72-year-old section of Line 5. This month, a federal judge blocked Michigan from enforcing an order to shut the pipeline down, ruling that pipeline safety is a matter of federal responsibility, not states. In March, the Army Corps fast-tracked a permit for the segment under the Trump administration’s energy emergency declaration, allowing the agency to bypass regulatory laws, like the National Environmental Policy Act. Shortly after, seven tribal nations withdrew from discussions, citing the federal government’s failure to engage with tribal governments.

Currently, the initial permit hasn’t been signed or finalized by the USACE. “Until the permit is signed, USACE has not engaged in a judicially reviewable final agency action,” a spokesperson for Enbridge said. “Enbridge will move to intervene in the lawsuit and defend the USACE’s forthcoming permit decision.” In Wisconsin, the Bad River Band has also initiated litigation against the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources over its state permitting of Enbridge in August. 

Gussie Lord of Earthjustice said litigation is going to be an uphill battle, but adds that the Bad River Band believes it’s their responsibility to protect the area’s watershed and environment.

“We need people who are going to be thinking about what makes sense, for the future, not just 10 years from now, but 50 years, 100 years from now,” Lord said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Bad River Band is suing to protect its wild rice from an oil pipeline on Dec 23, 2025.