It’s been almost exactly one year since Enbridge filed its application with the Michigan Public Service Commission seeking approval for its Line 6B “replacement” project. And in that year, we’re not aware of a single elected official from Michigan at the state or national level who has made a single public statement on the matter– much less one who has taken a coherent position that reflects a concern for the important public issues at stake. (If someone knows of such statements, we’d love to hear them).
Because of this extraordinary silence, this leadership vacuum, we’ve spent a fair amount of time over the past few months contacting the officials elected to represent our interests in Michigan and Washington D.C. (And we would urge you to do the same!) We have been met with varying degrees of responsiveness– and we’re not afraid to name names:
We’ve had good conversations with the offices of state Representative Brad Jacobsen and state Senator David Robertson, although these conversations have yet to bear any fruit. We are yet hopeful. We’ve had frustrating exchanges with U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow, from whom we received a series of thoughtless form letters until one of our contacts in the press called her office on our behalf to ask why she wasn’t responding to consituents’ concerns– then we suddenly got a phone call. And our numerous attempts to contact U.S. Representative Mike Rogers– a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee!– have been completely ignored.
We find it more than a little perplexing that Michigan– the state in which (do we really even have to say this again?) the most expensive inland oil spill in U.S. history occurred just two years ago– would be suffering from such a dearth of leadership. One would think, to the contrary, that politicians would be falling all over themselves to get tough with Enbridge, particularly after the release of the blistering NTSB report. Right?
Which brings us to our most recent attempt to locate a Michigan leader: our conversation this past week with Governor Snyder’s office. Besides being met with incredulity — they just couldn’t understand (1) why we would be upset about Enbridge installing a new pipeline, and (2) why we were calling the governor about it. They simply could not understand our point of view, that we are skeptical of Enbridge’s motives and claims and their track record in the state. In other words: the governor’s office seemed to think that this issue was just not their problem. John from Constituent Affairs (he wouldn’t give his full name) even implied that our skepticism was somehow offensive, since he lives less than 2 miles from the Marshall spill. He also told us repeatedly that the Line 6B project is really a federal issue (which would seem to be at odds with the view of Debbie Stabenow; her office tells us that the Line 6B project is really a state issue!).
We’ve learned a couple of important lessons from these exchanges: one is that these officials apparently aren’t hearing from many of their constituents about Enbridge. And if these officials aren’t hearing about it, they’re obviously going to assume that there is no problem that they need to address. Another lesson (and this one is related) is that, for whatever reason, these same public officials are disinclined to initiate any sort of action on their own– out of fear, lobbying pressure, weakness, inertia, a lack of awareness, who knows why?
But we still think that they will respond to public pressure. That is why it is so important that those of you who have serious concerns speak up: write your elected officials letters and emails, call their offices. We want to help you do that, which is why we are preparing a letter, which we’ll post here in the coming days, that anyone can easily adapt (or simply copy) and send to their local and national reps, our U.S. senators, and the governor. Stay tuned.