Worth repeating: Enbridge Line 5 will break. The question is whether or not it will break when it’s carrying millions of gallons of light crude oil and who knows what other stuff under the Great Lakes.
Recently sworn in Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-Michigan) and Attorney General Dana Nessel (D-Michigan) are already taking steps towards shutting down the Canadian oil company’s pipeline at the bottom of the strait that separates Michigan’s two peninsulas.
It’s like Michigan is playing a game of Russian roulette with the Great Lakes. Only that we’re constantly pulling the trigger. And maybe the gun is pointed at one end of a rubber garden hose.
Okay, I’m sorry, that’s belaboring the metaphor. The point here is that we’re gambling with the health of large fresh water lakes.
“It’s an unacceptable risk,” then-Lt. Gov. Brian Calley (R-Michigan) said to my face in 2017. Calley understood I wanted to hear that, he has that ability to figure out what it is that people want to hear.
Then he smoothly mentioned that the Upper Peninsula needs propane in the winter, and pivoted to inquire about other things he could do for me that are more obviously relevant to me, and hopefully less disruptive to a big corporation.
The thing is, though, that everyone in the world should care about the Great Lakes. The effects of an oil spill in the Great Lakes could have disastrous immediate consequences for everyone in Michigan, Ontario and neighboring states and provinces. I certainly don’t want to find out how long it would take for the effects of an environmental disaster at the Mackinac Straits to reach where I am.
Republicans who don’t care about Flint would definitely care about such a disaster as could happen with Line 5. Though political fallout would be the least of our worries.
Both Whitmer and Nessel promised to shut down Enbridge Line 5 in their campaigns. Line 5 hasn’t been shut down yet and no one expected it would be shut down on January 2.
But Whitmer and Nessel have already taken some concrete steps for shutting it down soon, and not just trading the danger of the pipeline for a different danger in seven to ten years.
Their efforts are complicated by a deal former Gov. Rick Snyder (R-Michigan) made with Enbridge last year. Paul Egan reports for the Detroit Free Press:
On her first working day in office, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer acted Wednesday [January 2] to potentially block the Enbridge Line 5 tunnel backed by former Gov. Rick Snyder.
Whitmer announced Wednesday she has turned to newly elected Attorney General Dana Nessel for a legal opinion on six questions related to whether legislation rushed through the Legislature to authorize the proposed Line 5 tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac complies with the state constitution.
Nessel said she welcomed the request and cautioned Enbridge against relying on recently passed legislation to move forward with its plans for a $350 million to $500 million tunnel, while her ruling is pending.
…
Republican Snyder, during his last month in office, rushed to finalize tunnel agreements with Enbridge and pushed enabling legislation through the Republican-controlled Legislature during the recent lame-duck session.
Snyder said the tunnel is the best way to safely replace the existing pipeline while ensuring oil and propane supplies the pipeline carries are not interrupted. The newly created Straits Tunnel Authority gave a green light to the tunnel project on Dec. 19.
Whitmer said in a news release she "pledged to take action on the Line 5 pipeline on day one as governor, and I am holding true to that campaign promise.”
…
Snyder has said encasing a new Line 5 pipeline in a tunnel is the best way of replacing the aging pipeline while guaranteeing energy security for Michigan, including propane the line delivers to Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Opponents say Line 5 mostly delivers Canadian oil to Canadian markets and Michigan will remain at significant risk for a spill during the estimated seven to 10 years construction will take.
I have to give credit to Egan for some of his word choices. However, he seems a little too eager to find opposition to Whitmer’s plan among trade unions, who would supposedly benefit from working on the Enbridge tunnel. Not surprisingly, the unions declined to comment.
Still, Egan’s article is a hell of a lot better than the editorial in the Detroit News that conveniently neglects to mention Enbridge’s terrible safety record. Like the oil spill that “contaminated Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River with hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil,” according to EPA.gov.
The News editorial board had the gall to start off with a false equivalence between Whitmer’s promise to shut down a dangerous light crude oil pipeline and Trump’s promise to build a monument to hatred on our southern border.
First of all, Trump had almost two full years with a sympathetic Republican majority in both houses of Congress and he hardly did anything to get wall construction started. Whitmer waited how many hours after swearing in to get the ball rolling on the Line 5 shutdown?
Also, shutting down Line 5 would prevent a humanitarian crisis, whereas Trump’s wall would exacerbate an existing humanitarian crisis.
According to the News editorial board, transporting light crude oil by freighter or by truck is riskier and less “environmentally friendly” than transporting it through the pipeline.
It’s true that an oil spill from a freighter would be a very bad thing. But at least with an oil spill from a ship there is no way for some idiot to misunderstand what is happening and then idiotically decide to send more oil to the impacted freighter with the push of a lever. That’s based on a true story.
A rush to shut down Line 5 could cause some major inconveniences. But an oil spill in the Great Lakes would cause far more damage than Enbridge’s $1.8 billion assurance money could hope to fix.
I hope that this horrible scenario remains strictly in the realm of speculation.