The Neahtawanta Center and the Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities are co-sponsoring a community read and discussion in November as part of the Bob Russell Resilience Reading Project. The book choice is the Pulitzer Prize-nominated The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan.
Attorney General Bill Schuette was quoted again this week with his strongest language yet about decommissioning Line 5 under the Straits of Mackinac. Disagreeing with an assertion that the pipeline could last “indefinitely”, Schuette called for a “comprehensive plan … to drive the timeline for the (pipeline’s) closure”. Yet in the same statement he suggested the pipeline could be replaced with a tunnel under the Straits, a risky and expensive alternative that ignores the long-term solution of getting oil to Michigan from other existing pipelines and, ultimately, reducing our demand for oil and transitioning our economy to run on cleaner fuel sources.
Twenty-eight business leaders have joined a new Great Lakes Business Network (GLBN), which calls for the strategic decommissioning of Line 5, Enbridge’s 63-year-old oil pipelines on the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac.
Here’s a recap of some of the latest developments in Groundwork’s efforts, as part of the Oil and Water Don’t Mix coalition, to raise awareness of the threats posed by the pipelines in the Mackinac Straits.
Citizens groups, including the Groundwork Center, sharply criticized proposed legislation introduced today that would permanently block public access to pipeline safety records in Michigan, including for high-risk pipelines running through the Straits of Mackinac operated by the controversial Canadian oil conglomerate Enbridge, Inc.
Hundreds of people turned out last week to pepper local officials and employees of Enbridge, Inc. about the 60-year-old oil pipeline running under the Mackinac Straits. They wanted to know what’s being done to prevent underwater leaks, and how a rupture would be contained before it gravely damaged one of Michigan’s most beautiful places. By the end of the meeting it was clear that opponents had more questions than Enbridge managed to answer.