Special Common Council Meeting 3/17/22

UPDATE: This special meeting has been canceled for Thursday, March 17th due to a lack of council members available to attend, meaning we will not have a quorum as required by law. It will be rescheduled in the next 60 days. 

ORIGINAL POST: Mayor Woodford has called a special council meeting on March 17th at 5:30 p.m. to take up a resolution submitted by aldermen, Alex Schultz, Vered Meltzer and Nate Wolff. The resolution on "Clean Water and Treaty Rights" asks the council for a number of actions, but generally, it would have the council and the City of Appleton oppose two Enbridge pipeline projects known as Line 3 and Line 5 . I would note that the Line 3 project was completed and operational in the fall of 2021. Line 3 also does not pass through Wisconsin. It terminates in Superior, WI, just across the border from Minnesota. 

A map of Enbridge pipelines in the United States and Canada

There is a lot to unpack in this resolution. I'll start at the 10,000 foot view of the appropriateness of our council debating this. 

It is worth noting right off the bat, that department directors are not going to be present for this meeting. Generally, directors attend all council meetings to help answer questions pertaining to items on the agenda and city policy. However Mayor Woodford has excused directors from having to attend this meeting and I believe that is a point worth noting as to the appropriateness of this resolution. 

Since my time on council began last April, there have been a number of resolutions that have come forward that do not impact city operations or matters of city policy. I have spoken against and voted against all of them as being a distraction from our elected duty and an inappropriate abuse of staff time. City staff should not be spending time investigating and researching resolutions that do not affect the city. We need them focused on providing services efficiently and effectively to our community. 

 Almost identical resolutions have come before the city councils in Green Bay and Madison. I have been told this resolution is is more than a year old and has been shared in some form in many communities in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. The resolution in Green Bay was voted down and in Madison it was approved unanimously. Like in those communities, the Appleton resolution would not have any direct impact on whether or not these pipeline projects move forward.  

I can appreciate my colleagues' passion for environmental awareness surrounding this project.

My fellow aldermen have a number of ways in which to advocate their position on these pipeline projects. They can use their personal social media accounts, join a protest, write letters to the company, financially support efforts to stop these projects, stop using or buying gasoline for their cars and natural gas for heating their homes. I don't know if they have engaged or plan to engage in any of those activities. But the floor of the Appleton Common Council is not the place for that advocacy. Local government serves to provide basic services to the community. Political, environmental and other types of activism are not one of those basic services.

As such, I will be voting no on this resolution and strongly urging my colleagues to do the same. I will also be asking my colleagues to refocus their time and attention on issues that directly impact our residents. We will begin a new council year in April and I would hope we will spend our time focused on city business as we have been elected to do. 

Below is the text of the resolution itself and a further breakdown of the inaccurate information it contains, along with some important context my colleagues have left out of the discussion. 

RESOLUTION ON CLEAN WATER AND TREATY RIGHTS 

WHEREAS the Upper Mississippi watershed and the western Great Lakes, as well as the rights and sovereignty of Indigenous people, along with many historic cultural sites, are threatened by Enbridge Energy’s construction of Line 3, an expanded, rerouted, tar sands pipeline passing through northern Minnesota, and portions of Line 5, a reroute of an old, corroding crude oil pipeline that crosses many sensitive and vulnerable environmental and cultural areas in Northern Wisconsin, and threatens the safety and wellbeing of not just Northern Wisconsin but our entire state including Appleton; 

and WHEREAS, Enbridge has a history of catastrophic oil spills in the upper midwest, including in in 1991 in Minnesota when 1.7 million gallons of oil spilled near the Prairie River, and in 2010 in Michigan when 1.1 million gallons of tar sands oil spilled into the Kalamazoo River; 

and, WHEREAS, from 2002 to 2018, Enbridge and its joint ventures and subsidiaries reported 307 hazardous liquids incidents to federal regulators - one incident every 20 days on average - which released a total of 2.8 million gallons of hazardous liquids; 

 and, WHEREAS, in June 2021, Enbridge employees were arrested and charged in human trafficking while working on Enbridge Line 3; 

and, WHEREAS, on May 3, 2021, Mayor Woodford commemorated the lives of those missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and acknowledged that resource extraction is directly related to human trafficking; 

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Common Council of the City of Appleton support the rights of the Anishinaabe to hunt, fish and gather established by treaties, including their actions to protect the land and waters of the Upper Mississippi and Great Lakes watersheds on which those rights are practiced, by opposing the construction of Enbridge Lines 3 and 5. 

 BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Common Council of the City of Appleton call on all residents of Appleton to raise awareness about this important struggle for Indigenous sovereignty and environmental justice by learning from Indigenous leaders, Native organizations and other organizations such as stopline3.org,narf.org, oilandwaterdontmix.org and to support water protection efforts in any way they can. 

 BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Common Council of the City of Appleton call upon the Wisconsin DNR to reject Enbridge’s permit application for the construction of Line 5 across so many vulnerable environmental and cultural areas in Northern Wisconsin. 

 BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Common Council of the City of Appleton call upon every elected leader at the local, state and federal level with the authority to stop the construction of Lines 3 and 5 to do so immediately. 

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED that the Common Council of the City of Appleton hereby recommend that the city of Appleton reject any request for mutual aid by Enbridge Inc. for the purpose of constructing and operating Lines 3 and 5. 

There are a number of accusations against Enbridge in this resolution. When I contacted a representative of Enbridge, the company disputed some of the allegations contained in this resolution. The authors did not cite where they found information on the incidents mentioned. 

• The Minnesota oil spill referenced was not an Enbridge pipeline. It was owned by a company called Lakehead Pipeline. That is not to diminish the impact of the incident, but I believe accuracy is important. 

• News reports indicate the human trafficking incident in the resolution, did not involve employees of Enbridge as the resolution suggests. Again, this does not diminish their alleged actions, but the resolution implies the men were employees of Enbridge and they were not. 

• There is a reference that Mayor Woodford "acknowledged that resource extraction is directly related to human trafficking" in reference to a resolution he presented in May of 2021. That resolution does not cite any connection between these pipelines and human trafficking, nor did the mayor mention that during the meeting. 

Together, the outdated information and misleading statements my colleagues failed to research and correct, present a biased and, at least according to Enbridge, inaccurate picture of their company and the projects. 

Transporting oil, whether by truck, rail car, ship, or pipeline, carries inherent risk. Each of those methods also carries environmental costs. The Line 5 pipeline carries more than a half-million barrels of oil per day. To move the equivalent amount of oil by truck would require 90 trucks per hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The project to reroute the Line 5 pipeline stands to create nearly 1,000 construction jobs and inject millions of dollars into the Wisconsin economy. 

Without the Line 5 pipeline, indications are that in Michigan alone, gas prices could be $0.10-$0.40 per gallon higher permanently. At a time when we are experiencing record gas prices, do we want to raise our costs even more? 

The truth is, this resolution is lacking in both facts and substance. There is simply too much work happening in Appleton that demands our attention and due diligence right now and I hope this resolution is defeated and we can get back to city business. 

Get In Touch

I am always available to answer questions at district15@appleton.org or (920) 419-1360. As always, agendas can be found on the agenda and meetings page of the city website. Meetings can be viewed live on the website or watched at a later date. Meetings are also open for anyone to attend in person and all meetings take place in the Common Council chambers on the 6th floor of City Hall, unless otherwise noted.