Opinion | 15 years after oil spill, why Michigan should reject Line 5 tunnel

Fifteen years ago this month, my uncle answered an early morning phone call. The call was from a neighbor who said that something was happening on our family farm — there was a gas or oil leak, and things looked and smelled really bad. My aunt and cousin drove to the farm the next day to check things out. Things did indeed look and smell bad — there was a thick layer of oil sludge on the surface of Talmadge Creek, a tributary of the Kalamazoo River, which runs across the north end of the property. It was clear a pipeline had ruptured — but the extent of the spill and damage was not yet known. 

We soon found out that our family farm was destroyed as a result of what we now know of as the Enbridge Line 6B oil spill, one of the largest inland oil spills in United States history. It’s a stark reminder of the decision that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration is facing as it reviews permits for Enbridge — the same Canadian corporation responsible for the spill on my family’s property — for building an underwater tunnel in the heart of the Great Lakes.

My family knows the cost of taking Enbridge at its word, and, based on the corporation’s horrible track record, so should the State of Michigan. The company’s history of oil spills is too much to be ignored. That’s why state regulators have a responsibility to protect our air and water and reject Enbridge’s tunnel scheme. 

The scene was a difficult one for my family. The farm had been in the family since about 1930 when my great-grandfather bought part of the property. My grandparents moved their young family there in 1947, so it was where my father and his siblings spent much of their childhoods. After my grandfather died in 1996, my aunt and uncle restored the 440-acre property to indigenous prairie to honor the legacy of his environmentally minded parents. 

Several days after the spill, I joined my uncle and father to visit the property again. We met with a lawyer who represented Enbridge. The lawyer told us that things were not as bad as they looked, and that Enbridge had everything under control. He said, “A year from now, you won’t even know this happened,” and reassured us that Enbridge would restore the land to be better than it was before the spill.

After many months of getting little or no response from Enbridge to our questions about the extent of contamination and their plans to restore the property, my family felt it had no other option but to file a lawsuit. After a difficult and painful legal process, we finally settled with Enbridge. Enbridge bought the farm. A project we had been planning for years designed to honor my grandparents would not be built.

While some may not be able to relate to what my family experienced, so many others can envision what it would be like to see the Great Lakes harmed. Our lives would change irrevocably. Fishing, swimming, boating, and other activities we enjoy would come to a screeching halt if what happened on the Kalamazoo River happened across our Great Lakes. A spill under the straits would be much more difficult to contain, and the environmental damage would be much more consequential.

Our last chance to stop Enbridge from constructing a dangerous fossil fuel tunnel through the heart of the Great Lakes is approaching. Engineering experts have testified on the record about the risk of explosion if this project is built. The Trump administration directed the US Army Corps of Engineers to fast-track permitting for the Line 5 oil tunnel, which the agency is slated to approve in the coming months. Now is the time for the State of Michigan to step up and make sure all the boxes are checked off before Michigan taxpayers lease dirty fossil fuel infrastructure to a foreign corporation for 99 years. 

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and EGLE Director Phil Roos have a responsibility to protect the Great Lakes, stand up to corporate polluters and reject the Line 5 tunnel permit –– something that a complete environmental review would show as the right thing to do. My own experience with Enbridge oil spills is unfortunately a proof point in what could go wrong in building such an unprecedented oil infrastructure project. And I shudder to think of the damage done to my family’s farm and all those affected by the Kalamazoo River oil spill, on a scale that could encompass our entire great state.