In July 2010, a pipeline carrying tar sands crude oil began leaking near Marshall, Michigan. By the time it was stopped, almost a million gallons of that oil was in the Kalamazoo river. Six years later, they’ve been given little more than a slap on the wrist for it.
Surprise, surprise, Enbridge has had yet another oil spill and has had to shut down a pipeline that runs through Michigan. 57,000 gallons of oil spilled in Saskatchewan, forcing them to shut off Line 4, which runs through part of Michigan (not the one under Lake Michigan, that’s Line 5).
Enbridge, the company responsible for the largest and most damaging inland oil spill in the history of the county here in Michigan in 2010, has reached a ridiculously low settlement with homeowners and local residents. They’ll pay only a few million dollars to those whose lives were uprooted because of their negligence.
The National Transportation Safety Board has finally released its report on the July, 2010 spill of over 800,000 gallons of tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River here in Michigan. The result is exactly what our reporting at the Michigan Messenger had established long ago, though in even more detail — that the company that owns the pipeline, Enbridge, could have prevented the spill if they’d wanted to do so. My friend and former colleague Todd Heywood has the details.
A lot of attention has been paid to TransCanada, the company that owns the Keystone pipeline that has gotten such controversy, but more people should also know about Enbridge, the other big Canadian oil pipeline company that has had big problems with spills. Here’s a video that makes fun of their proposed Northern Gateway project, which would carry tar sands oil to the Pacific coast of Canada to hit the world market.
It’s been almost exactly seven years since the Lakehead Pipeline 6B burst, sending more than a million gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo River, and now there is a bipartisan push to close down Lakehead Line Five, which goes under the Mackinac Bridge and is more than 60 years old.
In July, 2010, Lakehead pipeline 6B leaked around a million gallons of oil into the Kalamazoo River. As editor of the Michigan Messenger at the time, my two reporters, Todd Heywood and Eartha Melzer, did almost all of the good investigative reporting on the matter, including reporting that there’s a pipeline right beneath the Mackinac Bridge. Activists now want that pipeline shut down.
Five years ago this month, an Enbridge pipeline burst near Marshall, Michigan, sending nearly a million gallons of tar sands crude into the Kalamazoo River. The cleanup of that massive spill is still ongoing. But a new report by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality is calling for an end to oil pipelines across an even more sensitive area, the straits under the Mackinac Bridge.
In 2010, a pipeline owned by Enbridge leaked over 800,000 gallons of tar sands crude into the Kalamazoo River. One of my reporters for the Michigan Messenger, Eartha Melzer, tracked all the pipelines crossing the state and found on that goes right under the Mackinac Bridge in Lake Michigan/Huron. That pipeline now has a “pinhole leak.”
Oh joy. The State Department has approved, apparently illegally, a request by Enbridge, the company responsible for spilling almost a million gallons of tar sands crude into the Kalamazoo River in 2010, to double the amount of such oil flowing through another of their Michigan pipelines.
In the wake of any large oil spill, the companies responsible often spend large amounts of money on TV commercials and other ads assuring local residents that they will take full responsibility and make sure that everything possible is done to clean them up. Let’s see how that works out in the long run.
Edward Snowden isn’t the only whistleblower getting attention at the moment. TransCanada, the company that owns the Keystone pipeline and wants to expand it all the way to the gulf coast, has a whistleblower named Evan Vokes who is making life difficult for them.
Dispatches From the Culture Wars
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In