We’re continuing our tardy news roundup, which we started yesterday. There, we called your attention to some recent news articles form Macomb County describing some residents’ concerns about Enbridge’s work on Phase Two, which is about to kick into high gear in the eastern part of the state.

This morning, another local article appeared, describing a recent open house hosted by Enbridge in Washington Township. We will say this much: it’s good to see that Enbridge is reaching out to residents to some degree. They certainly did no such thing in our part of the state prior to construction on Phase One. So this sounds like an improvement.

Having said that, we suspect that the Enbridge officials there didn’t spend much time explaining to landowners the realities of how the work will proceed: the poor communications they’ll likely get from Enbridge land agents, the noise and the mess and the mistakes they’ll have to endure, the need to remain vigilant so that construction agreement violations don’t go unnoticed and unrectified, and much more. Instead, Enbridge surely painted a very rosy picture, one that doesn’t bear much resemblance to actuality.

What makes us say this? Well, not just experience– though that experience speaks volumes, we think. Also, it’s because of a couple of the remarks of Enbridge spokesperson Jennifer Smith. First, Smith digs up this old chestnut:

“Overwhelmingly a good majority of landowners are understanding and we have good relationships with them,” she said. “But there is always going to be concern.”

Regular readers of this blog may recall the time that Jason Manshum said the same thing (you’ve got to hand this much to Enbridge, they are disciplined about staying “on message”). And when he did, we wrote to him asking for some actual evidence to back up that claim– but that was back when he was not replying to our emails. Another time, we ourselves actually tried to generate some data on this question, but concluded that it’s almost impossible to really know. The point here is that (a) Jennifer Smith, no more than Jason Manshum or Tom Hodge, really doesn’t know whether “a good majority of landowners are understanding.” This is just a pleasing story Enbridge likes to tell itself and the public; and (b) this odd talking point makes it seem as if, like a political candidate running for office, Enbridge only cares about winning over a simple majority. Evidently, when it comes to landowner satisfaction, they like to set the bar extremely low.

The other troubling remark from Jennifer Smith– well, not so much troubling as rather astonishing in its complete disregard for facts– is this:

Smith said safety is the main concern for those in and around the project, and for workers on the project itself. She said Enbridge has been sensitive to ordinances and regulations every step along the way.

We won’t quarrel with the point about safety (although we could). But the second point, about Enbridge’s sensitivity to local ordinances and regulations? Well, that is simply a clear, plain, demonstrable untruth. In fact, it’s so untrue, that Matthew Fahr, the reporter on the story, or his editor  ought to issue a correction. We’ve spent the better part of two years discussing Enbridge’s disregard for and evasions of local ordinances, laws, and regulations. In fact, in our post just yesterday, Brandon Township Supervisor Kathy Thurman herself provided a very clear example of how Enbridge was absolutely NOT “sensitive” to one of Brandon’s ordinances:

“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.”

We think that most people will agree that “in violation of” is very different from, perhaps even the opposite of, “sensitive to.” So either Jennifer Smith simply has no idea what happened in, say, Brandon and Howell Townships or– and we hope this isn’t the case, because it would be much, much worse– she DOES know and is therefore willfully and deliberately misleading people in a shameless attempt to pacify them. In either case, we are sad to say that the good people of Washington Township were clearly not always accurately informed. So while it’s good that Enbridge is holding these open houses, they still appear to have plenty of work to do to ensure that those open houses are genuinely and honestly informative– and not just spin sessions.