By Pat Egan, Emeritus Member of Sierra Club's Executive Committee
As a resident of the Upper Peninsula I need to take issue
with a mis-guided and fact-challenged essay published here by Doug Stockwell of
the Operating Engineers regarding the submerged old pipeline crossing under the
Straits of Mackinac, and new job-ending pipelines in SE Michigan.
Mr. Stockwell calls a group of fact-finders, retired
engineers, chemists, business people and serious academics “alarmists. “,
connoting a cartoonish Chicken-Little. These are people who recognize the hazard
of a 63-year old pipeline crossing lakes and tributaries in Michigan, and
crossing under water and ice in the highest risk setting in North America. The
threat of that pipeline is not just to clean drinking water, but to thousands
of jobs and businesses and whole communities.
Facts from Enbridge are hard to come by in any discussion of
their Line 5. That is because the company does not have to publicly reveal what
it is transporting in its pipelines, where it is eventually destined, and for
what purpose. Not even the Operating Engineers know. Other, non-Enbridge facts
are easier to know. We know about the currents in the Straits – twice the
original design assumptions. We know about a clean up “success” of 35 to 40
percent. We know about metal fatigue and mussels. We know about easement
promises and promises broken. We know that this pipeline was not designed to
last over 60 years.
The Operating Engineers say that shutting off the risks
posed by this aged, clunky pipeline jeopardizes warm homes, jobs and economic
development. The economic devastation of
a significant spill in the Straits is obvious, it is real, and it trumps any
number of jobs that Line 5 oil makes in Michigan.
We in the Upper Peninsula have several sources for home heating
oils and gasses. We will live the same lives we are now living the day after
the State of Michigan realizes its responsibility and shuts down oil transport
in a pipeline that has been, and presently is, violating legal easement
agreements
Enbridge has multi-billion dollar revenue every financial
quarter. The Canadian-based company keeps that revenue unless it is fined, as
it has been many times, or has to pay damages for its many spills.
The Michigan Operating Engineers benefit from pipeline
maintenance and construction, and yes, pipeline catastrophes. They do not
mention the jobbers and truckers who will lose their jobs when new pipelines
are built in South East Michigan. They would also suffer with the rest of us if
businesses and the entire tourism economy of Michigan takes an ink-stained hit
when oil blackens the Straits.
The people of Michigan are taking all the risk with this
obsolete and dangerous pipeline. The oil Line 5 carries to a Detroit refinery
is about 3% of its load, and that refinery has almost 90 percent of its supply
from other sources. Instead of defending this high-risk pipeline, the Operating
Engineers of Michigan should become “alarmists” as well, and recognize the
significant hazard that is Line 5.
