This week, we’ve been running down the Top Ten Line 6B Citizens’ Blog Posts/Stories of 2013. If you missed it, here is the bottom half of the list and here are the next four. We’ve saved #1 for last, in a feeble and probably not-very-effective attempt to build a little suspense. Once more for the record, here’s what the list looks like so far:
10. Line 6B Earns Pulitzer Prize
7. How Not to Write About Line 6B
6. IJNR Kalamazoo River Institute
5. PHMSA
4. Enbridge Thinks EPA is Stupid
3. Why Enbridge Can’t Do Better
2. Enbridge Re-writes Michigan Law
Now, we have to say once more that it was tempting to place “Enbridge Re-Writes Michigan Law” at the top of the list. We still think that’s an important, revealing, deeply disturbing story, one that has garnered far too little interest. Unfortunately, regulatory matters just aren’t terribly interesting to people, even though, in our view, they are tremendously important when it comes to protecting the public interest, the environment, and the rights of ordinary, individual citizens.
On the other hand, the truth is that #1 on our list was obvious from the start. And fittingly, it’s the content on this blog that we did NOT write ourselves. From the very beginning, this blog has always been devoted, first and foremost, to helping and trying to protect landowners– the people most directly affected by Enbridge’s path of destruction. For that reason, the choice for our top story of the year– actually, a series of stories– is a no-brainer:
1. Landowner Stories. Earlier this year, figuring we could stand to shut up for a change, we turned the blog over to our fellow landowners and let them express themselves and describe their Enbridge experiences in their own words. The results, we think, were extraordinarily powerful. What’s more, for every one who has told her or his story here, there are surely 5, 10, or 20 more landowners along the Line 6B route (not to mention along the routes of pipelines all across the U.S. and Canada!) with similar tales. These people are your neighbors and your fellow citizens. They’ve gotten a bad deal from Enbridge and they’ve been left unprotected by ineffectual regulatory agencies and timid state elected officials. They should be heard.
It’s strange that there have not been comments on an issue that is so much more than pipelines ,oil, or easements .. it’s your right to have a voice, a vote on what happens on your land.. Make sure you are heard before it’s too late . There’s a revolution coming!