It’s the end of the semester for us, which is why we’ve been a little quiet this past week. There are all sort of final tasks to attend to this time of year, not least of which are piles of student papers to grade. Wish us luck that they are all brilliant and trenchant!

But there is a bit of pipeline news to share, including a personal item we’ll tell you about soon.

The latest Enbridge news, unfortunately, isn’t so good. Ace reporter Jennifer Bowman over at the Battle Creek Enquirer reported this week that Enbridge is suing the owner of a farm along the Line 6B route to gain access to his property for activities related to the spill cleanup. In its suit, Enbridge claims that the landowners have been recalcitrant and unwilling to reach an agreement. Knowing how Enbridge negotiates with and treats landowners, we’re more than a little skeptical about Enbridge’s claims in this matter, although the full details of the situation aren’t entirely clear. At the very least, dragging yet another landowner into court doesn’t seem like a very good p.r. move, given Enbridge’s already damaged reputation in this state.

We’ve also gotten word that construction activity has begun to heat up on our friend David Gallagher’s property. And evidently, it’s off to a rocky start. Dave tells us that crews tried to begin work before installing some agreed-to seismic monitoring equipment. We fear that this is only the first of a long stretch of headaches Dave, like so many others have endured, is going to have to attend to in the weeks and months to come.

Another landowner, our friend Patricia, has also contacted us with some terrible, ongoing noise and mess over in her neighborhood– again, just one in a long litany of difficulties she’s had to put up with. That story will be the next installment of our ongoing series of landowner stories. Expect it very soon.

Lastly, we’re still working on the first of our series of posts about last month’s PS Trust conference. If you haven’t seen them already, the video presentations are available for viewing. If nothing else, we strongly recommend, where you can hear from the above-mentioned Dave Gallagher, along with two other remarkable pipeline-company-created activists.