BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — As Enbridge prepared to move climate-damaging tar sands crude through a 40-year-old pipeline in eastern Canada in 2015, environmentalists and indigenous peoples including Vanessa Gray thought about what happened in Michigan just five years earlier: Another of the company’s lines had burst, sending oil into a river in one of the largest spills in U.S. history.
With that in mind, Gray and others decided they needed to do more than just speak out. In December 2015, three activists from Montreal entered Enbridge property near the Quebec-Ontario border and turned an above-ground emergency pipeline shut-off valve. About two weeks later, Gray and two others did the same at a different site, drawing even more attention because authorities levied charges that could have landed them in prison for life.
