Last week’s MPSC ruling– which we’ve already discussed at length— has received plenty of press, though not much of it is particularly detailed. We already linked to Eric Lawrence’s article in the Detroit Free Press (Lawrence understand the importance of the NTSB report!). Over at MiLive, they’ve run two articles about the ruling. The first contains a couple of gems from our old friend Jason Manshum. There’s the familiar condescending Enbridge chestnut about how people use petroleum products in their everyday lives:
“This is all about meeting demand in the region, specifically Michigan,” he said. “We (consumers) are using more fuel and products that come from petroleum.”
And then there’s the fuzzy, evasive claim about all the jobs this product is going to create:
The project should provide about 1,000 temporary and permanent jobs, Manshum said.
We’ve already discussed how this claim is at best disingenuous. Notice the equivocation of Manshum’s “should” there. And notice how Manshum does NOT say that these will be Michigan jobs. And notice that he says nothing about how many of those will be temporary and how many permanent.
The other MiLive article gives us a statement from an MPSC spokesperson:
“The commission took a very long and hard look at the entire record of the case, and they did determine … that the pipeline will serve a public need, that it is designed and routed in a reasonable manner, and that it meets or exceeds current safety and engineering standards,” said MPSC spokeswoman Judy Palnau.
Please take note and remember this three-part standard here. As we’ll discuss at length in the next installment of our newest series, this is very important. And the fact that the Judy Palnau has gone out of her way to emphasize it– effectively making it a talking point–only goes to show how central this framework has become for this case. Here’s the teaser: Enbridge created this framework.
In The Macomb Daily, Frank DeFrank cites the same three criteria at the end of his article. He also spoke with Armada Township supervisor John Patarek, who says that he:
has met with Enbridge officials and Paterek said company officials have communicated well with residents and township officials “so far.”
We hops that “so far” is an expression of caution, or better, of skepticism. We also hope that he’s spoken with his peer Kathy Thurman.
Beyond Michigan, the San Francisco Chronicle has a nice piece on the news. They had the good sense to call our friend Beth Wallace, who is clear, smart and on-point as always:
The National Wildlife Federation, one of the environmental groups that criticized Enbridge for the spill, said it was disappointed that the Michigan commission approved the permit. While replacing the pipeline is a good idea, the company shouldn’t have been allowed to divide the project into segments, which enabled it to avoid a more stringent federal review, said Beth Wallace, the federation’s Great Lakes community outreach adviser.
“There would have been more public input as well as a long-term environmental impact assessment” if the federal government were involved, Wallace said.
Finally, not directly related to the MPSC decision, check out one of our favorite Enbridge-made activists the irrepressible Michelle Barlond-Smith, who was up in Canada last week telling it like it is, as she always does. Go Michelle!