Greetings! We’re sorry we’ve been neglectful around here the past few weeks. It’s been an eventful end-of-winter to say the least– we won’t bore you with any details. We do have a fair amount of new to update you on and we suspect that Enbridge is thinking about dusting off the bulldozers and getting back to work. For those of you at the beginning of the process: brace yourselves.

But for now, just a quick post with two items: you may have heard about the oil spill at the BP refinery in Whiting, Indiana, where some sort of “malfunction” caused a not insignificant amount of oil to spill into Lake Michigan. The exact number of gallons isn’t certain yet– but it’s rising. Nor is it clear whether the spill was dilbit (though the Whiting refinery is served by our very own Line 6B). You can read more on the story here and here and here.

While this incident is obviously troublesome, it’s also just in time for a forum that we’ll be participating in next week at Notre Dame University’s Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values. We’ll be giving a presentation, as will our friends Beth Wallace, Steve Hamilton of Michigan State, and fellow landowner and Notre Dame professor Patricia Maurice. We’re especially grateful to Patricia for setting this event up. If you’re in the area, we hope you’ll try to make it. We’d love to meet some of our readers in person. The event is Tuesday, April 1. Full details are available here.