News

The Mackinac Straits Corridor Authority will make taxpayers shell out $1 million to rubber stamp Enbridge Line 5 oil tunnel project.

The Mackinac Straits Corridor Authority, the body in charge of oversight of Enbridge’s Line 5 oil tunnel project, met today in Detroit. Coming on the heels of a disastrous decision by the Michigan Public Service Commission to approve a key permit for the project, authority members discussed the implications of this ruling while failing to provide the proper oversight. The following statement is attributed to Christy McGillivray, legislative and political director for Michigan Sierra Club:

“After a disastrous ruling by the Michigan Public Service Commission last week, it’s clear that Enbridge is continuing to avoid accountability and short-circuiting environmental reviews to get their oil tunnel in the Straits of Mackinac –– even if it means that they’re not doing it with full transparency and oversight.

"Simply put, Enbridge lied again. Taxpayers are still footing the bill for a boondoggle oil infrastructure project that may never actually get built." - Christy McGillivray, Legislative and Political Director, Sierra Club of Michigan

“Today, we learned from Mackinac Straits Corridor Authority members that there will be no engineering staff on site if or when tunnel construction happens. We also learned that the independent quality assurance contract procurement only considers conflicts of interest. Moreover, Michigan taxpayers will pay close to one million dollars for legal and technical expertise for the foreign oil and gas company’s tunnel project, even though Line 5 will be a stranded asset by 2041. Simply put, Enbridge lied again. Taxpayers are still footing the bill for a boondoggle oil infrastructure project that may never actually get built.

“We must have proper oversight and transparency for a project like this. Corridor Authority members should provide oversight by allowing the public to see the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ data for their environmental impact study, providing transparency about the validity of the criteria used to determine the independent quality assurance procurement process, ensuring that Enbridge is selecting contractors that fall within the independent quality assurance procurement process, and by implementing a robust process to account for the fact that Enbridge is already violating industry engineering standards for a project of this scale. Rick Snyder may no longer be governor, but his legacy of rubber stamping infrastructure projects that create public health disasters continues to live on.”

Watch Christy McGilliray's comments here.