Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner said in a statement the company is "pleased with this decision that acknowledges the thorough, inclusive and science-based review of the Line 3 replacement project."
Nearly 800 of several thousand demonstrators were charged with crimes, most of them stemming from protests during last year's construction. About a fifth of the cases remain open.
The site near LaSalle Creek in Hubbard County is one of three places where crews installing the Enbridge-owned pipeline last year caused uncontrolled flows of groundwater.
"Despite attempts by people like Winona LaDuke to try to confuse, mislead or misrepresent, reality is something that thankfully cannot be ignored," says Thief River Falls Mayor Brian Holmer.
"There’s a pretty good argument to be made that Enbridge incentivized arresting people, including creating some new legal theories of theft. A half-dozen people were charged with felony theft for locking themselves to construction equipment, depriving Enbridge of its use. Hubbard County dismissed those charges."
Roughly a thousand people were arrested during those actions. Some were charged with relatively serious crimes, including gross misdemeanors and felonies.
Oil has been flowing through the completed pipeline for months now, but the White Earth Band of Ojibwe — Minnesota's largest Native American tribe with about 20,000 members — continues fighting the project in court, and through extraordinary surveillance efforts.
Wieland writes, "The Line 3 radical environmental activists should be charged and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, just as the Jan. 6th rioters are being. If it is wrong for the Jan. 6th rioters, it is wrong for the Line 3 environmental activists."
