We are currently working on a very important post about a deeply troubling matter that might affect a number of Line 6B landowners. Please stay tuned for it in the next couple of days. As we await some more information– as you know, we strive to be accurate– we thought we’d begin our long overdue and ever-growing news roundup. It’s going to take a few posts.
Now that spring is here (knock on wood!) and the ground has begun to harden a little, Enbridge is getting back to work to our east, putting in the remaining section of pipeline that will run from Ortonville to Marysville, Michigan. Unsurprisingly, that means unhappy landowners. We’ve found some of the local news coverage so far quite interesting:
Over at the Macomb Daily, reporter Lara Mossa quotes our hero Brandon Township Kathy Thurman in an article about Enbridge’s return to work in that area. In her typically restrained way, Thurman recalls some of Brandon’s troubles last year (see our archives) and even talks a little tough:
“There have been a lot of concerns,” she said. “There have been some issues. We ended up shutting them down at one point, because they were in violation of a woodlands agreement.”
Oxford Township Supervisor Bill Dunn, on the other hand, neither reports nor foresees any problems. But his remarks about Enbridge are hardly a ringing endorsement:
“I know they have had problems in other townships, but, for the most part, they are going through very large parcels of land,” he said, adding that much of it is old gravel mines. “It’s not like they’re going through subdivisions. I have not had any complaints. Enbridge has been somewhat cooperative.”
In Bruce Township, according to another Macomb Daily article, residents are (understandably) unhappy with Enbridge’s planned destruction of a number of very tall trees near the Ford test track. Weirdly, Macomb County Road Commissioner Bob Hoepfner thinks that Enbridge’s offer to replant twice as many crappy little trees as the mature ones they’re cutting down is “generous”:
Hoepfner said Enbridge was more than within its rights to do the work on that designated portion of land and offered the county a “two for one” deal to replace all trees that would be removed immediately rather than do their work and see the trees die later.
“They showed us what needed to be done and we agreed with them,” said Hoepfner. “It was a generous offer. Cutting the roots would kill them and the right thing to do is to have them removed.”
But residents and Township Supervisor Richard Cory (no, not that Richard Cory!) think otherwise and say not-so-fast:
“None of us will ever live long enough to ever see those trees provide enough shade over the road like it has now,” said one resident of the proposal to replace the mature trees with new ones after completion of the project.
Cory later asked if residents wanted to fight to have the trees remain intact; the overwhelming response in unison was “we want the trees to stay.”
What the township will base its fight on is a letter Cory read aloud at the meeting from attorney Benjamin Aloia to Enbridge representative Mike Ashton.
Cory said the letter, dated March 10, 2014, was apparently in response to a proposal from Enbridge to remove the trees.
“The Road Commission did not approve or authorize any work whatsoever within the Road Commission’s 36 Mile Road statutory 66-foot full-width right-of-way under this permit,” Cory read to the residents. “The removal of trees was not expressly permitted by the Road Commission with the three-mile stretch of 36 Mile Road in question.”
Finally, from Marysville, the Times Herald reports on some landowners feeling abused by Enbridge. Despite a rather insulting headline– “People Gripe About Enbridge”– the article gives a fair hearing to the concerns of some landowners who appear to have received the same sort of treatment we’ve documented here exhaustively.
What’s the takeaway here? We imagine Enbridge and/or Enbridge apologists would dismiss all of this by saying that any large project is going to run up against some complainers (a notion that, unfortunately, the last story’s headline seems to enforce). But those so-called “gripers”– Brian St. Clair, Thomas Leen, and Judy Robertson, not to mention all those concerned Bruce Township residents– have an awful lot of company. What this says to us is that Enbridge still, after all this time, hasn’t learned anything or is simply incapable of changing its ways.