Laura Cameron, with the Manitoba Energy Justice CoalitionThe Line 3 Replacement Program pipeline project by Enbridge has community members talking.

This week the Manitoba Energy Justice Coalition held a town hall meeting in Gretna about the project. Five different speakers, one being an environmental scientist, presented their concerns about the project.

Laura Cameron is a volunteer community organizer with the Manitoba Energy Justice Coalition.

She said the evening was for people to raise questions about "some of the risks associated with the Line 3 pipeline, and sort of challenging some of the narratives."

During Cameron's presentation, she outlined concerns about the old pipelines staying in the ground, and how long the new Line 3 pipeline will last until it has to be replaced as well.

To begin the meeting, guidelines and ground rules for respectful communication were laid out.

"I think that we've been trying to frame the event as openly as possible so that people are willing to come no matter what their views are on the project," said Cameron.

Robin Neustaeter, a resident of Gretna, said the event was sparked by conversations with people in the community.

"We became curious and we're sharing and exchanging our own ideas and perspectives," said Neustaeter.

She said the chosen speakers bring perspectives from within the community as well as outside of Gretna.

Robin Neustaeter, Gretna resident

"This is kind of an introduction or a start to opening a conversation around the topic," she said.

David Scott from Swan Lake First Nation has concerns about past oil spills near his community's water supply. He said they plan to observe the construction of the new pipeline, and that the public has the right to know the details of the project.

Terry Mierau, Neubergthal farmerTerry Mierau, a farmer at Cedar Lane Farm in Neubergthal, was another speaker.

"I just wanted to make clear that fossil fuels and the pipelines have affected agriculture in a big way, in the last 70 years let's say. To some perspectives it would be seen as a very positive effect that fossil fuels have had on agriculture, but that looked at from a different light, you see that it's actually quite destructive, that it's destructive to rural communities... in ways that you may not see at first, that's what I was hoping to show," said Mierau.

Mierau and other speakers seemed surprised that this was the first discussion about a pipeline that runs just outside of the community.

Shaun Friesen, a longtime resident of the area, attended the meeting and listened to the speakers.

"I was impressed with what David Scott brought to the table, his Indigenous perceptive, he obviously truly cares about his community. I was just struck by the fact that he says when Enbridge or any other resource-based organization deals with them, they deal with the community. Here... they're dealing with the individual farmers," Friesen said.

"It just rekindled again for me the importance of community... people who didn't know each other came, I think it was for something more than the pipeline, I think it's

Shaun Friesen, area resident because people are beginning to care about the Earth in a different way," he added.

Friesen's main takeaway from the evening is whether the pipeline is a short-term solution since presenters argued it doesn't have a long lifespan.

"My big question is, what's the end run of this pipeline? It is just to fuel Enbridge, the Canadian economy, or is it, in fact, a transition (for) when we move from oil and gas to maybe a... greener alternative," Friesen asked.