Media Release: Proposed “Line 5” Tunnel Under the Mackinac Straits Ignores Looming Disaster

Protecting the Common Waters of the Great Lakes Basin
Through Public Trust Solutions

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Liz Kirkwood, Executive Director
FLOW (For Love of Water)
Office: (231) 944-1568
Cell: (570) 872-4956

Friday, June 15, 2018
Email: Liz@FLOWforWater.org
Web:  www.FLOWforWater.org

Proposed “Line 5” Oil Pipeline Tunnel Under the Mackinac Straits Ignores Looming Disaster,
Locks in Decades of Risk

Enbridge’s Snyder-commissioned tunnel report released today is a dead-end 
for the Great Lakes and Pure Michigan economy

A Canadian oil transport company would be assured billions of dollars in more profit, while the Great Lakes and Michigan’s tourist economy would face decades of more risk of an oil spill disaster from a new Line 5 pipeline tunnel or trench under the Mackinac Straits, as envisioned in a self-serving report released today by Line 5-owner Enbridge and commissioned by Gov. Rick Snyder.

“Citizens and leaders in Michigan agree that you wouldn’t approve an oil pipeline like Line 5 today given the extraordinary risk to our globally unique Great Lakes,” said FLOW Executive Director Liz Kirkwood, an environmental attorney and a co-leader of the Oil & Water Don’t Mix campaign seeking to shut down Line 5. “In a time of water shortages and changing climate in this century, it doesn’t make sense to even contemplate constructing Canadian oil pipelines in a tunnel under the world’s largest supply of fresh surface water.”

Spending up to a decade building a tunnel also would do nothing to address the immediate threat posed by the decaying, 65-year-old Line 5 oil pipelines in the open waters of the Mackinac Straits. Enbridge’s oil pipelines in the Straits are bent, cracked, gouged and dented by an anchor, scraped bare of their protective coating in places, and encrusted with corrosion-causing invasive mussels. Line 5 has exceeded its life expectancy and is more than two decades older than Enbridge’s pipeline that ruptured and dumped a million gallons of heavy tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River watershed in 2010.

A Line 5 oil spill in the Mackinac Straits could deliver a blow of more than $6 billion to Michigan’s economy from damage to natural resources, tourism, coastal property values, commercial fishing, and municipal water systems, according to a recent study by a Michigan State University economist commissioned by FLOW.

“The only way to prevent an environmental and economic catastrophe from a Great Lakes oil spill is to shut down Line 5 now,” said FLOW Senior Advisor Dave Dempsey. “Gov. Snyder and Attorney General Schuette have a legal duty to place protection of the public’s waters above the private pursuit of profit.”

Gov. Snyder so far has ignored the overwhelming call from citizens, businesses, and communities to shut down Line 5 and pursue alternatives such as sending the oil through other existing pipelines with excess capacity owned by Enbridge and its competitors. A recent poll showed that most Michigan voters wanted Line 5 shut down. Options for supplying propane to the Upper Peninsula also should be studied and implemented, including use of truck, rail, or a small, new pipeline.

Instead, Gov. Snyder’s tunnel vision bypasses his own Pipeline Safety Advisory Board, favors a Canadian company that has repeatedly misrepresented the safety and integrity of the pipeline, and raises legal, environmental, and other issues that he thus far has failed to address as his tenure as governor nears an end. Key concerns about tunneling or trenching oil pipelines beneath the Mackinac Straits include:

1. A Canadian tunnel under the Mackinac Straits is not permissible under Michigan’s Great Lakes Submerged Lands Act (GLSLA), common law public trust doctrine, and would violate the 1836 Treaty with Michigan Tribes protecting the Straits fishing grounds. These protections are meant to safeguard the Great Lakes. State officials must enforce them, and Enbridge can’t ignore them. One such protection requires Enbridge to prove that there are no other alternatives to Line 5 or the Straits, when in fact other alternatives exist.

2. Building a tunnel under the Mackinac Straits ignores the risk Line 5 poses to the other 245 water crossings, including ones that are direct tributaries of Lakes Michigan, Superior, and Huron. A tunnel in the Straits would do nothing to protect those Michigan and Great Lakes waterways from a Line 5 spill. The only effective way to eliminate an oil spill threat to the rest of our Great Lakes is to actually stop oil flowing through the Straits.

3. Climate change demands immediate, coordinated state, regional, and national energy policies that promote the expansion of renewable energies. By locking in continued investment in fossil fuel infrastructure like Line 5, the Governor would unilaterally undermine the economic benefit to Michiganders of the job-producing clean energy revolution spreading across North America.

4. A tunnel option would effectively give Enbridge the green light to expand its North American tar sands operations here in the heart of the Great Lakes. How? Even though Line 5 currently does not transport heavy tar sands under the State of Michigan’s 2015 ban, Enbridge could seek a court order to lift this ban and transport tar sands in Line 5.

5. Talk of building a tunnel is a distraction from the immediate and ongoing threat of a catastrophic multibillion-dollar oil spill. Aside from monumental legal and engineering challenges, building a tunnel demands years of construction and disruption to the region’s economy from tourism to fishing, according to the state’s alternatives report on Line 5.

6. A tunnel is no gift to Michiganders. We know that all pipelines – even in tunnels – have an inherent risk of spills in their operations. In fact, since 1968, Line 5 has leaked at least 29 times on land, spilling over 1.1 million gallons of oil into Michigan’s pristine lands and waters. The risk of having a spill cannot be completely engineered away because of the ever-present potential for human error contributing to, or causing, a spill event. Moreover, a Line 5 oil tunnel that also carries natural gas liquids—which Enbridge advocates—creates a new hazard for the Great Lakes—extremely flammable materials that under some conditions in a confined space such as a tunnel can be explosive. 

7. Oil pipelines do not belong in our Great Lakes given the magnitude of harm and unacceptable risk they pose to our public waters, our economy, and our way of life. Half of all Michiganders, from Mackinac Island to the Motor City, rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water, as do more than 48 million Americans and Canadians in total. Let’s do the smart thing, work together to find reliable long-term energy solutions for Michigan, and shut down Line 5 before it’s too late.

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