Welcome to 2014 everybody! In the spirit of the New Year, we’re taking a bit of time to look back by counting down our Top Ten posts of the year that just was. If you missed the bottom five, you can read about them here. But just to recap them quickly:

10. Line 6B Earns Pulitzer Prize

9. Pet Coke

8. Red Herrings

7. How Not to Write About Line 6B

6. IJNR Kalamazoo River Institute

Now on to the final five:

5. PHMSA. Last summer, we were lucky enough to be invited by the National Wildlife Federation to participate in a lobbying “fly-in” to ask some of our elected officials to support the NWF petition seeking some new rules on pipeline safety from PHMSA. We also wanted to meet with PHMSA officials themselves, but they declined. This did not please us, especially since, in our view, PHMSA is already far too insulated from the concerns and viewpoints of ordinary citizens– as opposed to the concerns and viewpoints of industry. We’ll have much more to say about PHMSA in 2014, especially once we return to writing about the PS Trust conference last November. And we are likely to once again adopt the tone of this post that we wrote upon our return from the D.C. trip.

4. Enbridge Thinks EPA is Stupid. Among the more astonishing Enbridge blunders of the last year was their hapless, thoughtless, tone-deaf, corner-cutting attempt to secure a dredge-site plan in Comstock Township so that they could complete the Kalamazoo River cleanup according to the deadline set by the Environmental Protection Agency. In addition to attempting to skirt local zoning ordinances, they also managed to agitate the owner of one of the state’s best breweries and as a result found themselves in a bit of a pickle. Then, in order to get out of the pickle they found themselves in, Enbridge Vice President Richard Adams went and crafted one of the most desperate, disingenuous, counter-factual, values-violating letters imaginable to the EPA asking for more time– as if the EPA were somehow completely unaware of the facts on the ground. Fortunately, the EPA turned out not to be as blind, gullible, and stupid as Enbridge evidently thought they were.

3. Why Enbridge Can’t Do Better. If you just went and re-visited that little episode, you might be wondering to yourself, as we have on countless occasions, why in the world Enbridge conducts itself this way, why they can’t just do things right, why they can’t act according to– not in opposition to– their professed values. This is something we’ve pondered long and hard, far too much really. In fact, it’s something we’re going to ponder some more in the next week or so as we tell you a little about Enbridge’s just-released “Corporate Social Responsibility Report” for the past year. But back in June, we pondered it somewhat systematically in a series of posts that considered a number of possible theories for why Enbridge behaves the way it does. We’re not sure we arrived at any clear conclusions– but we think our hypothesis rests on some pretty firm evidentiary and experiential ground.

2. Enbridge Re-writes Michigan Law. One would reasonably think, after a disaster like the Marshall spill and all we know about its causes, that public officials and regulatory agencies would scrutinize the company responsible for the disaster very carefully, that those same officials and agencies would be skeptical, hyper-vigilant, extra-tough. But one would be wrong– at least here in Michigan. From the governors (outgoing and incoming) on down, almost no one in a position of authority at the state level uttered a word when Enbridge launched its “replacement” project. Frankly, in our view those officials– especially the Governor– are partially responsible for the nightmare so many landowners have had to endure over the past two years. Or, if we’re being generous, perhaps it’s just that they believed the Michigan Public Service Commission, the agency responsible for approving pipeline projects and entrusted with the solemn power to bestow upon private corporations the power of eminent domain, would do its job.

But one of the biggest stories of the past year is the story of how the MPSC did NOT do its job, failing miserably to protect the public interest and playing the role of Enbridge’s flunky. This became clear during the Phase Two MPSC proceedings, which we covered and wrote about at length, mainly in this series detailing the laughable efforts of their public engineer,  the MPSC staff attorney’s seeming advocacy for Enbridge’s arguments, the Administrative Law Judge’s background and Enbridge-friendly rulings, the gloating, mean-spirited, unprofessional final ruling, and more. Frankly (if you’ll forgive us for saying so), we think it’s the most important stuff we’ve written. That’s because, procedurally speaking, in Michigan the MPSC is the only line of defense for landowners and the environment. But rather than working for us, they went to bat for Enbridge. How that happened is a disturbing tale that was never really covered in any detail in the press (save for Inside Climate News). So if we had to choose just one single post that we wrote in 2013 that everyone should read, just one post that Beth Wallace’s mom should send around in one of her promotional blitzes, it would be this one. In it, we explain how Michigan public officials, along with a local Michigan law firm (Fraser Trebilcock Davis & Dunlap) worked together to sell out their fellow citizens to a Canadian corporation and its industry colleagues for years to come.

And yet, not even that vitally important story is #1 on our list. What could possibly top that? We’ll let you know in a final installment coming soon!