A few brief items of notes this morning:
- Federal suit: The latest news on the POLAR lawsuit in federal court is that Brandon Township, which on Nov. 5 filed a motion to join the suit, has also filed a motion to expedite a ruling on their filing (as of now, they are still not an official party to the suit). In response, Enbridge has filed a reply– a rather whiny one, in our opinion– suggesting that Brandon for some reason deliberately waited until the last minute to intervene. They also suggest that Brandon’s intervention has no bearing on Enbridge’s motion to dismiss the case, a motion based on the idea (as we’ve discussed before) that POLAR lacks standing. It will come as no surprise that we think both of those arguments are exceedingly weak. And reading Enbridge’s half-hearted response filing, it seems to us that they also know they’re weak. But we’ll see.
- Phase 2: Things are moving on phase 2 of the Line 6B project. When we returned home from the fantastic Pipeline Safety Trust conference late last week, we found a glossy new full-color newsletter from Enbridge providing lots of details on the project (in fairness, more details, perhaps, than we’ve ever seen before). We’ve got things to say about this interesting publication; we’ll get to it anon. The project is still making its way through the MPSC process; a hearing with witnesses was held just this week. One thing this means is that it’s high time to reach out to landowners along this next phase, to share information, and organize a little. If you happen to be on phase 2, perhaps you could drop us a note backchannel; we’d like to find ways to get in touch with as many affected landowners as possible. Stay tuned for more on this.
- Ad series: We haven’t forgotten about last week’s Free Press ad. We’re sort of excited about the response we’re working on.
- Photos: We’ll post some pictures from our recent reconnaissance tour soon. We’re still waiting to receive your entries for the photo contest (which isn’t really a contest, of course!). We don’t know exactly what’s happening up and down the line these days, but we can report that there has been no construction activity at all on our property in several days now. Things appear to be at something of a standstill. We suspect this is because agreements haven’t been reached with a number of nearby landowners. At this point, it looks as if Enbridge is installing a pipe to nowhere from nowhere.
- Reading: Lastly, over at the NRDC Switchboard blog our friend Anthony Swift has a very trenchant (as always) post refuting industry claims about dilbit. We think Anthony’s piece should be required reading.