Enbridge’s aging Line 5 oil pipeline has severe design flaws, independent engineering analysis and oversight needed.
A report done by a citizens group outlining the safety risks posed by Enbridge’s Line 5 oil pipeline in the Great Lakes is driving home the need for federal action on this dangerous threat to the drinking water of 40 million people across the United States and Canada. The report highlights how most of the 71-year-old pipeline is elevated off the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac - a crucial shipping corridor with current volumes 10 times greater than Niagara Falls. Now, members of Congress, including Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (MI-12), are urging the Biden administration to take notice and act before the region’s jobs, economic security, and public health are devastated.
Video Overview of Report
“Enbridge has a disturbing history of faulty infrastructure and environmental destruction,” said Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib upon the report’s public release. “An oil spill in the Straits of Mackinac is a real possibility. There must be independent oversight of Enbridge’s Line 5 until President Biden revokes the presidential permit for America’s most dangerous oil pipeline.”
Line 5’s dangers to the Upper Great Lakes Region are gaining national attention after last month’s New York Times story and a documentary feature in theaters nationwide. The Straits of Mackinac Alliance report garnered attention this week in Politico and Gongwer. Here’s what they’re saying about the crucial evidence this report presents about why Line 5 is unfit for service:
POLITICO Morning Energy Newsletter: “Michigan environmental group Straits of Mackinac Alliance is calling for an independent third-party review of safety and structural conditions of Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline. The group, which has previously asked the state to shut down the pipeline because of concerns about the environmental harm a leak would cause in the Great Lakes, says in a new white paper that a monitoring system would help reduce the potential damage.”
Gongwer: ‘The white paper is one of the latest moves in years of efforts by environmental and citizen groups to call attention to what they have said is a set of pipelines that could cause an environmental disaster if a major leak were to occur along the line where it crosses the straits.”
In addition to drawing attention to the deficiencies with Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac outlined in the report, Congresswoman Tlaib penned an opinion piece in the Detroit Free Press last month calling upon President Biden to take action on this pipeline’s threat to 20 percent of the world’s available, fresh surface water.
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