Honestly, we thought, after all this time, that things might change. We thought– despite the available evidence— that Enbridge might learn from its mistakes. We thought–we hoped– that landowners along phase two might benefit from the experiences of and all the noise made by those of us on phase one. We thought, at the very least, that Enbridge– so very thin-skinned and so desperately image-conscious— might want the tales of bad behavior and the criticisms to just stop and, therefore, that they would begin to conduct themselves in ways that comport with all of their good neighbor rhetoric.

Looks like we were wrong. Over the next several days, we’ll bring you three ugly stories of landowners along phase two, stories that are no less troubling because they sound so terribly familiar to those of us on phase one. Not surprisingly, these stories, like countless others we’ve heard over the past year, mainly have to do with the unreliability, untrustworthiness, and unprofessionalism of Enbridge’s right of way agents. This has long been a problem, perhaps the primary source of landowner unhappiness and dissatisfaction. There’s just no getting around the fact that Enbridge’s land agents (not every single one, of course; there are surely some good ones; as we’ve noted in the past, during construction and restoration, ours was very responsive) have done the company and landowners a terrible disservice. Their actions– misinforming, failing to return phone calls, communicating sporadically or poorly, dismissing legitimate concerns, using the threat of condemnation as a cudgel to beat landowners into submission (even before, as in our case, the state had granted Enbridge that right), treating people disrespectfully– have gone a long way toward breeding an atmosphere of mistrust and contention between Enbridge and landowners along the pipeline route. It makes one pine for the fictional land agent conjured up by Enbridge’s public relations machine.

But while a lot of blame for this breakdown of relations can be laid at the feet of Enbridge’s land agents (we’re not letting them off the hook), it’s Enbridge that bears ultimate responsibility for all of this (and this is why, we repeat once more, we have NEVER ONCE called out a land agent by name– though we could; nor have we told even the tiniest fraction of stories about their bad behavior that we’ve heard over the past year or so). Most of those agents aren’t really even Enbridge employees; they’re contractors– (which is an interesting story in itself; in fact, we know the land agent company that has contracted with Enbridge and have been looking into this; we hope to post more about it at a later date). When we, along with Kim Savage, told some of these stories of land agent behavior to the members of the Michigan chapter of the International Right of Way Association a few months back, they were shocked and appalled, nearly incredulous.

So why does this kind of land agent conduct seem to be continuing even today? After all, there are Enbridge employees who are (ostensibly) in charge of supervising those land agents (or so we think). And those supervisors surely know about the kinds of behavior we’re talking about. They have surely heard these stories by now, if not from this blog, then from plenty of other sources. Yet they appear not to want to hear it or do anything about it. At least that’s true in our experience: Mike Bradburn, Doug Aller, Mike Harris– all of them brushed us off, ignored our attempts to contact them; none have been willing to actually listen, take seriously, and respond forthrightly to landowner concerns about the people they supervise, then take action to correct these persistent problems, problems that have done nothing but alienate people, cause needless conflict and strife, and delay the timely completion of the project.

What’s more, all of this has led to a very strange situation in which, when things get particularly bad (or go public), people like Mark Curwin and Tom Hodge– people who have other jobs to do– have to step in and try to do the job that land agents should be doing: cultivating amicable relationships with landowners, addressing reasonable concerns, solving problems created by right of way agents. We saw this first hand, for instance, the night we met Tony Amico at a Brandon Township meeting. Honestly, if we were Curwin and Hodge, we’d be furious about this state of affairs; we’d be cracking heads over in the office responsible for land acquisitions and rights-of-way (and for all we know, maybe they have done just that; we haven’t got a clue what goes on behind the scenes).

But we have our doubts. One of the things we’ve learned after all these months, and we’ve discussed this before, is that Enbridge isn’t that good at being introspective, at taking a cold, sober look at their own conduct (and this despite their own stated corporate values), at being self-critical and making appropriate adjustments. That’s because to them, all of these are just p.r. problems, not systemic ones. So instead of altering their conduct, they tend to hunker down and get defensive. Or they just buy a new ad, send out a glossy new brochure, find someone compliant to help them polish their image. Or they deploy Jason Manshum or another one of their seemingly endless horde of spinmeisters.

The one thing they appear not to do– or so the stories we’ll bring you over the next few days– is the one thing that would actually solve all of these problems: treat landowners with respect and consideration; just stop giving us stories to tell.