We’re working on the second installment on our trip to Washington DC last week to meet with legislators and regulators. If you missed part one– about the meeting we did not have— please check it out.
In the meantime, some interesting articles and stories have appeared in the press in the past week or so. Here we go:
We’ve mentioned before Enbridge’s “Albert Clipper” expansion, which is currently going through the presidential permitting process, just like Keystone XL. This was one of the topics we discussed with representatives of the State Department last week. We’ll have a lot more to say about it in the weeks to come and we’ll likely be encouraging you to speak up once the public comments part of the review begins. For now, we”d just point you to this excellent op-ed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel by Eric Hansen. It’s excellent. Here’s a little taste:
Connect the dots on Enbridge’s efforts to quietly network thousands of miles of pipelines — a system that would lock in both Wisconsin and our region as a major transportation corridor to ship tar sands crude oil overseas to the world market for decades to come — and a reasonable citizen would be outraged.
Profit and jobs would go to Canada. Crude oil would go overseas. Toxic risk would stay here, sprinkled throughout our region in the crude oil spills, air quality and public health impacts that would certainly come.
And speaking of Keystone XL (we talked with officials about that, too, in DC), it appears that some legislators are none too happy with some recent remarks by the President (if you missed them, they are here). Which legislators are displeased, you ask? Well, none other than the House Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Fred Upton. Yes, that Fred Upton, the guy who represents Kalamazoo! Upton is among the most outspoken supporters of KXL– which, we suppose, gives him something to do since he certainly doesn’t spend any time whatsoever inquiring into what Enbridge is doing back in his home state and district. We’ve spent a fair amount of time here lamenting the appalling failure of leadership in this state when it comes to Enbridge– and we made that point repeatedly to the people we spoke with in Washington– but Upton, with the possible exception of Governor Snyder, might well be the worst offender. Given the district he represents, he should be leading the charge in looking out for the interests of Michigan landowners and the state’s natural resources. Instead, he’s leading the charge in hastening the transportation of more tar sands oil through the U.S.
Speaking even more of KXL and Enbridge, Pulitzer Prize winner Lisa Song has another excellent article over at Inside Climate News describing yet another Enbridge plan to out-Keystone TransCanada while almost nobody, as we’ve said many times, is watching. It’s more piecing things together, this time converting gas lines to transport tar sands oil. But it’s okay because you can rest assured that PHMSA will do almost nothing to ensure that the plan is safe and sound. The PSTRust’s Carl Weimer notes that “Operators don’t need permission from PHMSA to change the contents of a pipeline, and the conversion process doesn’t trigger environmental studies. Operators simply create a plan of operation that meets PHMSA’s pipeline safety regulations, he said.”
From Indiana, Jeff Harrell at the South Bend Tribune posted two articles this week about the Enbridge Line 6B project, placing them helpfully in larger contexts. It’s very solid work and we especially appreciate his focus on Native American concerns about the project. His first article begins, for instance, with representatives from the Pokagon Band of the Potawotami Tribe, who live on the Michigan-Indiana border.
Inevitably, Jason Manshum shows up in the article with more absurd, misleading remarks. He’s back to complaining about the “tar sands” term again: “Manshum calls the term “tar sands” “… a misnomer, a slang word associated with this type of crude by opponents.” But of course, this is total baloney. The industry itself used that term for decades until someone in Manshum’s line of work (spin doctoring) decided back in the 1960s that “oil sands” sounded friendlier.
Harrell’s second article, which unfortunately (we don’t hold him responsible for this) bears the very stupid headline, “Pipeline Has Support, Opposition” (they could have just said, “Humans Agree, Disagree”), considers Line 6B in relation to KXL, which we’ve been trying to convince reporters to do for a very long time. Manshum’s on board for this one, too, assuring us all that pipeline corrosion is not a problem with diluted bitumen:
Enbridge’s Manshum cites the U.S. Department of Transportation’s investigation into the spill to dispute the claim that the line broke from abrasive tar sands oil corroding the inside of the pipe.
“One thing they made crystal clear was that the rupture was not caused by internal corrosion, but on the outside, or the exterior of the line related to the coating,” Manshum says.
Strictly speaking, of course, what Manshum says is true. But it’s more than a little ironic that he’d cite the NTSB report, since what it also shows is that Enbridge ignored the pipe’s exterior defects and that their “culture of deviance” from safety protocols contributed tremendously to the Marshall disaster. Honestly, we sometimes wonder how Jason Manshum can sleep at night.
Lastly, Jennifer Bowman has a lengthy and interesting article in the Battle Creek Enquirer about Enbridge’s home buyout program in Marshall. It’s a piece that we imagine is quite pleasing to Enbridge, since Bowman talks with some people who had very positive experiences with Enbridge. She spoke also with some unhappy landowners, but they are more or less portrayed as greedy whiners. We find this entire situation quite fascinating and disturbing in many ways, though we confess we don’t know enough about it to make many confident pronouncements. We also think that Bowman’s article leaves a great many questions unasked; we’re going to think and learn more about this and discuss it more in a later post (hopefully). For now, just one little observation:
What is it with people that makes them so uncharitable toward others? Why the need to belittle those whose experiences differ from their own? We’ve seen this sort of tactic– from fellow landowners!–before. And we see it again from Wayne Groth, who gets lots of ink in Bowman’s article. Groth believes he got a good deal from Enbridge– and we’re very glad for that; we wish it were the case with everyone. But then he has to go and say this:
“The ones screaming the loudest are probably the greediest,” Groth said, “and they’re looking to cash in. They remind me of damn trial lawyers that want to sue for money and put the company out of business.”
In all seriousness: does Groth really know this? Does he even know who is “screaming” loudly, much less what those (imaginary) screamers are screaming about or for? We doubt it. This sort of talk just makes him seem like a guy with very little imagination, very little ability to adopt the perspective of someone else a person whose mindset is, “I got mine; screw the rest of you.” And that’s just downright unneighborly.
I guess I am one of those “greedy ones”! Oh wait…. NO I’M NOT! I have a home AND business where the line is going 10 FEET- YES! 10 FLIPPING FEET from my foundation! We had 2 different news stations here today discussing with us why we wouldn’t sell our property to Enbridge even though they had asked for it. I find it VERY funny that we have asked over and over for them to just buy the property so I don’t have to worry about a line that is that close to my home (where I am raising 4 small children and am due with one in 5 weeks!!!!) But yet their response is ALWAYS- ” We are not in the market of buying homes.” I just wish that people would see how aggravating this is to a family like mine! I think it is completely RIDICULOUS for us to be expected to deal with this being SO close to my home! I have kids that are freaking out because of the machinery being so close, as well as dogs that are afraid to go outside to even go potty because everything is shaking and so loud! I DO NOT and probably will never understand what these people are thinking!!!!!!
Thank you so much for all your information. A group of us in Grand Rapids, MN have begun an educational effort here because of Enbridge’s plans to pipe more tar sands through our area. We have listed your blog as an important one to read.
Thank you, Pat. And good luck! Please keep us updated. Do you have a website? I’d be glad to look to it.