Politics & Government

Enbridge on Notice to Reinforce Pipelines to Avoid Great Lakes Catastrophe

The letter to Enbridge Energy follows a U-M study that says an oil spill couldn't happen in a worse place than the Straits of Mackinac.

Canada’s Enbridge Energy has been put on notice and given a 60-day deadline to submit plans to reinforce oil pipeline beneath the Straits of Mackinac to avoid a potential environmental catastrophe.

Acting on behalf of the state, Attorney General Bill Schuette and Department of Environmental Quality Director Dan Wyant sent a formal notice requiring immediate action to install additional anchors on two pipelines laid beneath the straits six decades ago to Bradley Shamla, Enbridge Energy’s vice president of U.S. operations.

The letter comes after experts with the University of Michigan warned of an environmental disaster if the pipelines, which carry up to 23 million gallons of crude oil and natural gas fluids each day, were breached. The straits connect Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.

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“I can’t think – in my experience – of another place on the Great Lakes where an oil spill would have as wide an area of impact, in as short of time, as at the Straits of Mackinac,” the study’s author, David Schwab, a research scientist at the U-M Water Center, told the Detroit Free Press earlier this month.

» Read Schwab’s  full report.

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» Read the letter to Enbridge.

The letter to Enbridge officials comes almost four years to the day of the four-year anniversary of the Kalamazoo River spill, where more than 1 million gallons of oil leaked from a ruptured Enbridge pipeline, causing the worst inland spill in U.S. history.

State officials and members of Michigan’s congressional delegation have been closely monitoring pipelines since then. Schuette and Wyant are co-chairing

“We have a responsibility to mitigate any risk of serious harm to our Great Lakes,” Schuette said in a statement to the media. “If we see evidence that something isn’t quite right with the infrastructure that lies beneath them, we’re going to address it with every tool available.

“We will insist that Enbridge fully comply with the conditions of the Straits Pipeline Easement to protect our precious environmental and economic resources and limit the risk of disaster threatening our waters.”

He and Wyant are co-chairing a multi-agency task force that is closely scrutinizing petroleum pipelines and assessing their health, safety and environmental risks.

Enbridge has acknowledged that it is out of compliance with an easement agreement with the state of Michigan, which limits the maximum span or length of unsupported pipe in Enbridge’s pipelines in the Mackinac Straits. The agreement requires pipeline supports be placed an average of 75 feet apart, and Enbridge said earlier it would improve on that requirement and space the supports 50 feet apart.

Enbridge spokeswoman Terri Larson said In an email to MLive that construction on the anchor supports will begin in August, but she said the Straits of Mackinac crossing has been “incident-free since it was constructed in 1953.”


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