Why are rational people debating a Line 5 tunnel?
Recently, Governor Whitmer, who campaigned to shut down Line 5, seemed to reverse course and expressed a willingness to consider Enbridge’s absurd scheme to build a concrete tunnel to house the Line 5 pipelines. What led to this surprising retreat from her tough stance on the campaign trail remains opaque. But one can’t help but think that what we have here is yet another instance of Enbridge, its deep pockets, and its vast cadre of crafty lawyers manipulating yet another state official. Enbridge has been trying, often with success, to play Michigan’s elected leaders for fools for at least a decade: they dissembled for days about the type of oil they spilled into the Kalamazoo River in 2010; they hoodwinked the Michigan Public Service Commission into helping them re-write Michigan law to their own advantage; they dealt dishonestly with township officials and landowners during the replacement of Line 6B; they told a brazen lie to the EPA in their attempt to skirt local authority during the cleanup of the Kalamazoo River; and at one point, they even tried to convince the public that the Kalamazoo spill didn’t happen when it happened.
Whitmer promised an end to these manipulations.
Whitmer promised an end to these manipulations. Yet here we are again, this time discussing, studying, considering, and debating whether the State of Michigan should encourage and permit a massive, decades-long investment in what is in reality a mid-20th century infrastructure project: a concrete tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac that will keep Line 5 running for another 100 years, a ludicrous plan. The very real threats that transporting oil beneath the Straits poses to the world’s largest body of fresh water have been well documented. So, too, has the urgent need to curb greenhouse gas emissions in order to prevent climate catastrophe, the effects of which promise to be especially severe in the Great Lakes region in the form of rising water levels, infrastructure collapses, heat-related deaths, and dramatically reduced agricultural yields. Now is clearly not the time to encourage more fossil fuel development and consumption. Even energy market analysts are growing increasingly wary of investments in new pipeline projects.
For these reasons alone, the fact that Enbridge has convinced anyone at all to take seriously their outlandish tunnel scheme is astonishing. It’s doubtful even they take it seriously as anything other than a stalling tactic. In addition to making a backward-looking investment in fossil fuels, constructing a tunnel would require thousands of tons of concrete, the manufacture of which is another major contributor to global warming. The fact that the tunnel is treated as a real proposal, one upon which policymakers and thoughtful people ought to deliberate, is an unfortunate sign of just how much power and influence Enbridge possesses in this state, the gullibility and short-sightedness of our state legislators, and the utter failure of state leaders and, unfortunately, too many ordinary citizens to imagine a future that’s not virtually identical to our present.
Governor Whitmer’s rationale for re-considering the tunnel plan is that it can potentially “help… get the pipeline out of the water earlier.” Yet it’s not altogether clear how she has arrived at such a conclusion. After all, it is far from certain that the tunnel plan will get the pipeline out of the water earlier (one is tempted to ask, earlier than what?). Planning, studying, securing environmental permits, and an all-but-certain string of lawsuits are sure to delay the project for many years before construction even begins. Once resolved, the construction process, by Enbridge’s own estimate, is likely to takes long as another 10 years. By that time, it’s not unlikely that the realities of global warming will have persuaded even the most intractable of climate deniers, leaving a new generation of state leaders scratching their heads over what their predecessors were thinking.
Nor is it even true that the tunnel will get the pipeline out of the water. The concrete tunnel housing the new pipeline, even buried in bedrock, will still be susceptible to stresses and strains, potential cracks, seepages, accidents, explosions, and failures as any other piece of infrastructure. In other words, a tunnel is no guarantee of safety—as crumbling concrete roads, dams, bridges, and yes, tunnels, all over the world attest. And then there’s the danger of explosion. Yet among the most maddening features of the Line 5 debate has been the apparent willingness of everyone—opponents and proponents alike—to unquestioningly accept the premise— Enbridge’s premise— that a concrete tunnel somehow eliminates concerns about safety. But why should anyone assume that encasing Line 5 in concrete makes it any less vulnerable? A concrete tunnel will only introduce a new and different set of risks.
why should anyone assume that encasing Line 5 in concrete makes it any less vulnerable?
This week, Attorney General Nessel released her own statement on the matter. If talks with Enbridge fail to produce “a swift and straightforward resolution to this issue,” she announced, “I will use every resource available to our office to shut down Line 5 to protect our Great Lakes.” Nessel’s statement is carefully worded; she must surely know that any agreement that includes a tunnel will be neither swift nor straightforward. That leaves just one course of action.
In the twenty-first century Michigan’s political leaders have behaved like Rip Van Winkle. Having spent decades in a state of sleepy insensibility when it comes to the state’s energy infrastructure and freshwaters, they awakened to a new world after the disaster in Marshall in 2010. Yet they nevertheless continue to conduct themselves as if it’s still 1953, when it might have made sense to construct oil pipelines beneath the Great Lakes and when fossil fuel consumption seemed to have no consequences. But the world has changed. It’s not 1953 anymore and it’s long past time to stop acting like it is. Entertaining any solution to Line 5 other than its permanent removal from beneath the Straits makes our leaders—makes all of us—look as foolish as Rip when he mistakes the portrait of George Washington for a portrait of King George because he slept through the Revolution. We elected Governor Whitmer because she’s not a fool. She shouldn’t let Enbridge play her for one.