Flint and the Straits of Mackinac are 225 miles apart but one thing connects them in my mind: distrust.
I have it in spades. Probably we all do. Ever since the poisoning of Flint, I can’t bring myself to trust the state to protect us from anything, great or small, short term or long term.
I most assuredly don’t trust it to protect the Great Lakes, and so I side with the environmental groups that are pressuring the state to end a 63-year-old agreement that allows a company called Enbridge to pipe oil and propane gas under the Straits of Mackinac.
I had no idea Michigan allowed such a thing. I’ll bet you didn’t either.
I guess back in 1953 it didn’t seem like a big deal. But these days we’ve all seen what oil spills can do to the environment. The idea of a pipeline old enough to qualify for Social Security at the bottom of the Great Lakes is terrifying.
We could easily be the site of the next major ecological disaster. A new University of Michigan study if it happens says 700 miles of shoreline potentially could be turned to oily muck.
Enbridge, of course, calls that notion preposterous, but I don’t trust them either. I’ll bet Exxon never thought the Exxon-Valdez would run aground and turn the Alaskan shore into an inky nightmare either. And BP surely never suspected the Deepwater Horizon platform could ever explode and gush oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days.
But it did.
So when an Enbridge spokesperson calls the concerns that it could happen in the Straits to a 63-year-old pipe “fear mongering,” my brain reacts like the robot used to in (prepare yourself for a positively ancient TV reference from my youth) “Lost in Space” when it sensed trouble: “Danger, Will Robinson, danger!”
There’s already plenty of evidence that we should be concerned. A 2013 inspection showed dents, weld cracks and pipeline wall thickness deficiencies. An MLive report said: “A 7-inch long spot of pipe — located on the land portion — found to have lost 26 percent of this wall thickness from corrosion when last inspected.” It also quoted a former senior scientist and consultant for Dow Chemical who said, “It appears about 200 sections of pipe did not meet original specifications.”
That’s all I need to hear. You have an old, old pipe that isn’t critical to the state’s economy carrying toxic chemicals beneath pristine waters at the confluence of two of the biggest fresh water lakes in the world.
To me it sounds like an economical disaster waiting to happen.
That pipe may never break or leak. But why take the risk? Better safe than really, really sorry.
It’d be a shame to have to rename ourselves “The Used to be Great Lakes State.”
For more on the issue, see this New York Times piece.
Thanks for putting this issue so simply and clearly, Andy. We certainly cannot trust corporations because we know that “profit before people” is their mantra. Now we have learned that we cannot trust our state government anymore. The government used to be known for protecting its citizens, but now that we have a CEO for a governor, the same game is being played by them, “profit before people”. Even after the Flint water poisoning and all of the apologizing, I don’t see a change.
Absolutely agree with you, Andy. We have been given so many not-truths by the petroleum industry that it’s difficult to tell when they might actually be telling some semblance of the truth.
Let’s not forget the Enbridge pipeline that burst in the Kalamazoo River a couple of years back. Still cleaning that up. I don’t trust the State and I certainly don’t trust Enbridge.
Excellent point. Wish I’d remembered that.
I work for the State of Michigan and have for the last couple of decades. I thought that Engler was evil but Slick Rick takes the cake with being untrustworthy and his deceitfulness.
Btw – there was a lot more to the Kzoo River Enbridge story that never hit the papers…
DITTO, DITTO, DITTO…does anyone remember what DITTO means? Lol
I do.
Just like “AMEN”…..”Yea, Yea, It Shall Be So”
It is bound to happen. Pipes in a normal home from that year have to be replaced. How can we wake up enbridge?
You can’t wake up Enbridge – their vested interest is in spending as little as possible.
There is no vested clean up plan for a spill in the straits, especially if it where to happen in the winter. Wind and current will take a lot of the spill down the Lake Huron shore. Enbridge hopes being a light crude oil (nice game plan fellows) that it will eventually evaporate. So goes Sen. Stabenow and the Coast Guard.
The word Ditto apparently comes from the Latin word Dico, meaning “say.” Apparently, Ditto means “as said.” It is not the correct word form, but it may be a late or medieval form of the word.
Isn’t Enbridge also the company that had built a portion of the Keystone Pipeline before President Obama stopped it? And isn’t that part of the partially completed pipeline being used to ship oil as far as it can into the U.S. from Canada’s tar sands? And didn’t that line leak over 16,000 gallons of oil in South Dakota earlier this month? And they want us to trust them? Our state government trusts them? They need to have their heads examined.
Also Kzoo River. $75 million settlement in that one.
How hard is is for our elected representatives to say, “NO! Shut it down!” If they can’t say no to this rather obvious threat–maybe they shouldn’t be there. Have you asked your Representative and/or Senator about this?
No, not yet, but I will! I have lived here all my life in both peninsulas and I never knew about that pipeline. It must mean a lot of money for someone.
Bank on it.
it is hard for our representatives to say “No, shut it down” when they are already saying “Thank you for your ‘donation’ to my election coffers”
I have one of those aging pipelines across the street from my house. It was put in in roughly 1955. They send things in the mail asking if I would know what to do if it ruptured. It carries jet fuel and gasoline. I asked a rep. one time what would happen if it does burst and he said run like hell. Scary!
Good advice for most things in life.
Senator Debbie Stabenow is your elected official for the State of Michigan handling this. Send her office an e-mail, she is responsive to her elective.
Add the Au Sable River to the list as the DEQ is in the process of approving a fish farm that will destroy one of the most prestigious trout streams in the world.
A fish farm in the Au Sable? Wow, why?
How does a fish farm destroy all the trout streams in the world. I don’t get that one.
Whoops my bad I missed “one of the most” sorry!
Most people don’t realize that it is carrying a Canadian product bound for Canada. It is just using Michigan as a shortcut.
Ask the folks along the Kalamazoo River how much they trust Enbridge…