Opponents of Enbridge's Line 3 construction mount last stand at river's edge

PALISADE, MINN. – Drumming and singing rose from the snowy banks of the Mississippi River on Wednesday morning while heavy machinery beeped and revved in the distance. A dozen protesters prayed by the river as the state's largest construction project, the $2.6 billion Enbridge oil pipeline, continued its early stages in rural Aitkin County.

"I'll be a great-grandmother soon, so that is what I'm standing for - for those generations that are coming," said Tania Aubid, a member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and a local resident who carried a bullhorn and chiding pipeline workers for being there.

Aubid's voice carried through the trees and under the power lines near where the pipeline - a replacement for Enbridge's aging and deteriorating Line 3 - is being constructed as workers carried on, their vests and equipment spread out and visible to the horizon west of the river.

https://www.startribune.com/opponents-of-enbridge-s-line-3-construction-mount-last-stand-at-river-s-edge/573351251/