(2/18/2019)

From: Emilie Falc, Liz Wilson, and Scott Lowery

Co-leaders of Winona Climate Action Network



The title is a quote from Honor the Earth, the Minnesotan nonprofit working to raise awareness of Indigenous environmental injustice.



When we love water, we work to protect it from toxins and to make sure that fresh water will be available for future generations.



When we love water, we will also protect the wild rice beds that grow in Minnesota’s waters that have produced healthy nourishment for people and animals for many generations and that are included in treaty rights.



When we love water, we resist the oil pipelines, especially the planned Line 3 corridor in northern Minnesota that would scar those wild rice beds and threaten ground water and pristine northern waterways.



When we love water, we speak out about the likely leakage of Line 3’s tar sands oil, the most corrosive type due to the extremely toxic chemicals required to process this fuel.



When we love water, we support Govenor Walz’s announcement to keep up the pressure with the Minnesota Department of Commerce appeal against Enbridge (a Canadian company). Our Department of Commerce has continually been questioning the very basis for Enbridge’s new Line 3 pipeline that will become “a stranded asset” according to Winona LaDuke, an economist and one of the founders of Honor the Earth.



When we love water, we will recognize treaty rights to mean not spoiling the lands where generations of people, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, have hunted, fished and gathered.



If the Public Utilities Commission moves to approve Line 3 again, we support Govenor Walz’s Department of Commerce in bringing this to the Minnesota Court of Appeals to ask them to stop the new Line 3 corridor.