by Jeffrey Insko | Aug 11, 2013 |
Evidently, Enbridge thinks the EPA is stupid– or doesn’t have access to the local news.
As MLive reported last week— along with numerous other news outlets— Enbridge has asked the EPA for an extension to complete the latest round of dredging ordered by the agency earlier this year. The reason for the extension request has to do (ostensibly) with the situation in Comstock Township, the Bell’s Brewery lawsuit, and permitting from the Michigan DEQ. In and of itself, the extension request isn’t terribly surprising. And since we don’t know very much about dredge pads and zoning in Comstock Township and haven’t carefully investigated those things, we’re not really in a position to offer any confident opinions about Enbridge’s plan–although if Comstock residents and business owners like Larry Bell have serious concerns, we certainly think they need to be heard.
So this post isn’t really about the site plan. Instead, it’s about the part of the story that no one else (as far as we know) has bothered to mention: the audacity– or, to call it what it is– the flagrant dishonesty of Enbridge’s letter to the EPA. Why the letter’s demonstrable falsehoods– and we don’t use this language lightly– have thus far been given a free pass we do not understand.
Before we explain, let’s put this in a little context. Over the past year, we have said– and shown— repeatedly that Enbridge fails to live up to its professed corporate values. This simple point was even the basis of our talk at the PSTrust conference last year, which a number of Enbridge representatives attended. So they know very well that plenty of us are measuring their actions against their words. Once again, let’s take a quick look at some of those values. The first ones on the list fall under the heading of “Integrity”:
Integrity
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Maintain truth in all interactions
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Do the right thing; do not take the easy way out
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Take accountability for our actions, without passing blame to others
With these things in mind, let’s watch as Senior Vice President of Operations Richard L. Adams violates all three of them in the span of just a few sentences. Here’s what Adams says in his letter to the EPA requesting that extension. The offending portions are in boldface:
Enbridge’s preparation for dredging in the Delta and Morrow Lake area has been discontinued due to an unanticipated issue with securing a dredge pad site. Enbridge originally selected a site for the dredge pad that met all technical and practical requirements and promptly applied for the appropriate permit from the Township of Comstock. Unfortunately, some local residents and business owners have vigorously opposed granting the permit. As a result, the Township of Comstock has not yet issued the required permit to allow use of the specific site selected for the dredge pad.
1. “Maintain truth in all interactions.” Is Adams’s description of why Enbridge’s dredging plan has been delayed truthful? Well, no. Adams makes it sounds as if Enbridge was doing everything precisely as it should and would have made the EPA deadline just fine until some pesky obstructionist locals got in the way and mucked everything up. But that little narrative, flattering though it may be to Enbridge simply does not square with reality.
For one thing, it is quite plainly NOT true to say that Enbridge “promptly applied for the appropriate permit from the Township of Comstock.” Of course, the term “promptly” might seem to leave a little wriggle room (after all, who gets to decide what counts as prompt?). But let’s consider the facts: the EPA issued its dredging order on March 14 of this year. Enbridge only submitted a site plan to Comstock Township on July 9, nearly four months later (and even then, they submitted it to the wrong body, further delaying matters; more on this below). And they only did so after the Comstock Township Supervisor discovered they were about to begin work without the permit and asked them to stop. Would any reasonable person honestly believe that that qualifies as having “promptly applied”? In fact, does that even count as having applied at all? We tend to think not, but can’t say for sure.
But you don’t have to take our word for it. Just consider some of the key players in this matter who also do not think it was prompt. One of them is Enbridge’s own attorney Christopher Tracy. Here is what Tracy said at the Comstock Township Planning Commission on July 25 about that site plan:
I’d like also to apologize on behalf of Enbridge in terms of sort of the fast pace of this. All of you know we’re under an order from the EPA, where work needs to transpire between now and the end of the year.
We would love to have a situation where we weren’t sort of under that kind of clock. So we apologize if we sort of put you in that position and we apologize for not submitting the site plan to you earlier. It should have been done in a different manner, but it was not.
“We apologize for not submitting the site plan to you earlier.” Extraordinary, isn’t it? Not even Enbridge’s own lawyer thinks they applied for the Comstock permit “promptly.” He even apologizes for not having applied for it promptly and says that “it should have been done in a different manner.”
And Tracy is not the only one who doesn’t think Enbridge applied for the Comstock permit promptly. Have a look at what Comstock Township Supervisor Ann Nieuwenhuis says in a July 10 letter to the Michigan DEQ:
At the outset I must express disappointment that substantial work on both of those sites has occurred without Enbridge applying for and obtaining the necessary Township permits required under the Township’s ordinances and its Zoning Ordinance in particular. While representatives of Enbridge have recently expressed to the Township an intent to apply for and obtain the necessary Township zoning approval and otherwise comply with all applicable Township ordinance requirements, this has not yet occurred. Enbridge’s delay in approaching the Township in this regard has unnecessarily exacerbated the Township’s citizens’ concerns and will make it much more difficult to give those concerns as reflected in the Township Zoning Ordinance proper consideration within the abbreviated timeframe that Enbridge indicates is available to it.
So, neither Enbridge’s own attorney nor the Comstock Supervisor think that Enbridge applied for the Township permit “promptly.” In fact, both of them state quite clearly that a major problem here is that Enbridge FAILED to apply for the permit promptly. That failure is the primary cause of the delay, a delay that has in turn caused Enbridge to seek that extension from the EPA. Yet, in the face of this clear fact, as agreed to by both an Enbridge attorney speaking before the Comstock Planning Commission and the Comstock Township Supervisor, Richard Adams tells the EPA that Enbridge applied for the permit promptly.
2. “Do the right thing; do not take the easy way out.” Which leads us to the next “value” that Adams violates in his letter. The whole point of all of this for Ann Nieuwenhuis (or so it seems to us) is that Enbridge did NOT do the right thing from the start, which would have been to initiate discussions with the Township from the very beginning, to communicate their dredging plans with them, and to apply for the appropriate permits before starting work. But they did none of that. That’s what Nieuwenhuis objected to in the first place. Instead, Enbridge tried to “take the easy way out,” tried to just do things the way they wanted to, without consulting local authorities or inviting local input. (This is the same sort of thing they did with Brandon Township and Howell Township earlier this year.) And since then, Enbridge has continued to NOT do the right thing, like, for instance, submitting the site plan to the Planning Commission and not the Zoning Board as the process requires (thus further delaying matters!). Why did Enbridge do that? Well, here is what Supervisor Niewenhuis had to say about that:
The township had previously warned Enbridge when submitting its site applications that it should go through the ZBA first, but Nieuwenhuis said Enbridge tried to expedite the process by going straight to the Planning Commission with its north site application.
“They didn’t want to do that because (notice of the ZBA meeting) has to be posted in a newspaper 15 days in advance of the meeting,” Nieuwenhuis said. “They thought going directly to the planning commission would be the way to go.”
That’s right, Enbridge tried to “expedite the process”; they tried to take the easy way out. The same goes for Adams’s letter. In it, he isn’t doing the right thing. The “right” thing would be to own up to having screwed up and to accept the consequences of that screw up. But that’s not what he is doing in the letter. Instead, he is taking the easy way out.
3. “Take accountability for our actions, without passing blame to others.” Or, to put that last point another way, Adams is most certainly not taking accountability for Enbridge’s actions. Quite the contrary, he is clearly passing blame to others. His letter makes it look like Comstock, the DEQ, and Larry Bell (they can’t even bother to get the name of the brewery right, calling it “Bell Brewery”) are to blame for the delays. It’s everybody’s fault but Enbridge’s. Locals have “vigorously opposed granting the permit,” Adams says. And “as a result,” Enbridge’s plans have been delayed. But that is at best a half-truth. It certainly does not in any way acknowledge Enbridge’s role in delaying the granting of that permit. Such a brazen, deliberate mischaracterization of this situation– aside from egregiously flouting the values Adams is supposed to live by as an Enbridge employee (and not just any employee, but an executive!)– are precisely why Enbridge has lost so much trust with so many people. If they’re willing to look EPA in the eye and pass off clearly demonstrable falsehoods, how is anybody else ever to believe anything they say?
The thing that baffles us most is why Enbridge thinks it can get away with this sort of thing, why they think it’s okay to carefully and deliberately and demonstrably misrepresent the situation to the EPA. Do they think that they can just pull the wool over the eyes of Jeff Kimble, the EPA on-scene coordinator to whom the letter is written? Do they think that Kimble is that stupid? that gullible?
For our part, we think no such thing. We think there’s no possible way that Kimble doesn’t know the truth of the matter. If he really is on scene, he most certainly knows that Enbridge wasn’t just unexpectedly blindsided by a bunch of oppositional Comstock residents one day. He must know that Enbridge created this situation by attempting to proceed without engaging those same Comstock residents or following Comstock’s ordinances. He surely knows all of that. If we were Kimble, we’d be furious, insulted, affronted. And yet we doubt (though we don’t really know) that Kimble and the EPA will call Enbridge out on all of this any more than the press will. Enbridge will most likely get its extension and incur no penalties. Richard Adams’s counterfactual letter will accomplish precisely what it was designed to accomplish regardless of whether it accurately represents the situation.
Which leads us to a pretty frightening, disheartening, demoralizing conclusion– but also an explanation of why Enbridge thinks it can get away with this sort of thing. It’s because they can and do get away with this sort of thing. Over and over. And that’s because everybody just plays along, lets it slide, looks the other way, treats it as no big deal, as just the way things are. So what we have is a situation that looks something like this: Enbridge does not tell the truth to the EPA and knows it’s not telling the truth; the EPA, Comstock Township, and the press all also know that Enbridge isn’t telling the truth; and Enbridge knows that the EPA, Comstock, and the press all know that Enbridge isn’t telling the truth. But nobody says a word about it. Instead, everybody silently agrees to pretend like Enbridge is telling the truth. Everybody agrees to live in a sort of imaginary world where the untrue gets treated as true, rather than a world in which what is true really does matter. It’s the same way that everybody agrees to pretend that Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River are still real creeks and rivers, rather than Enbridge-created ones.
It’s just easier that way.
by Jeffrey Insko | Aug 16, 2013 |
This just in: the EPA has denied Enbridge’s request for an extension to complete the latest round of dredging in the Kalamazoo River. We don’t know enough about dredge pads and Comstock Township to have a strong opinion on the dredge site matter, but as we explained at length last week (here and in a letter to the EPA), Enbridge was shockingly dishonest in their letter to the EPA asking for the request. One can only surmise that that fact– there’s no way EPA couldn’t have known the truth– had something to do with the denial. It would have been nice to see EPA call Enbridge out on their attempt to blame someone else for the delay with the Comstock permit. But it was satisfying to see EPA call Enbridge out on a similar matter: Enbridge’s attempt to pretend like the Michigan DEQ was slow in issuing permits. From the EPA letter (emphasis ours).
Enbridge also noted in its letter that MDEQ has not yet issued the dredge permit for Morrow Lake and the Delta. Although this is true, it is also true that Enbridge has not yet submitted certain information required by MDEQ for the permit application. Enbridge has had all required information from U.S. EPA for completion of the application since U.S. EPA approved the Dredge Completion Depth Plan on August 1, 2013. U.S. EPA again reminds Enbridge to submit this information to MDEQ immediately.
Snap!
Ursula Zerilli has more in a thorough article over at MLive. Michigan Radio’s Steve Carmody has also filed a report.
by Jeffrey Insko | Aug 18, 2014 |
If you’ve been paying attention to Enbridge in the news, you might have heard about the protests up in Canada a couple weeks ago, where some concerned activists put up a blockade halting work on Enbridge’s Line 9 reversal project. In response to that action, Enbridge generated a shockingly disingenuous blog post under the headline– we’re not making this up– “Pipelines and protests: A meaningful discussion starts with the facts.” In it, Enbridge presents six “facts” about Line 9, as if to present themselves as the truth-tellers in contrast to those dishonest, un-factual protestors.
We’re not going to spend time here pointing out just how very arguable most of their six so-called “facts” really are. (Like the claim that “Line 9 has an excellent safety record,” which surely depends upon how one defines “excellent.”) Instead, we just need to point out how preposterous– preposterous to the point of being offensive– it is for Enbridge to try to take the high road and pretend to be genuinely devoted to “facts” and the truth.
Let’s just quickly review, for instance, some of Enbridge’s greatest hits of the last 12 months. Mind you, we’re not talking here about garden-variety public relations spin or the routine misinformation spread by land agents. We’re talking about clear, demonstrable falsehoods served up by prominent Enbridge employees, including some of their most senior executives. Here are just five examples of such falsehoods from the past year, demonstrating vividly how Enbridge engages in “meaningful discussion” starting with “facts”:
- In Indiana, Enbridge spokesperson Jennifer Smith told the public that federal regulations require them to remove all trees from the pipeline right of way.
- In Canada, Enbridge spokesman Graham White fabricated a disparaging story, out of whole cloth, about a single concerned citizen.
- In Minnesota, Senior Land Manager John McKay said that Enbridge pipeline projects begin with landowners deciding to do business with Enbridge.
- Here in Michigan, Vice President Rich Adams looked the United States EPA straight in they eye and told them an untrue story about obtaining a dredge pad permit.
- And most recently in Michigan, Vice President Brad Shamla pretended in front of the whole world that the pipeline rupture in Marshall happened a day later than it actually did.
Unfortunately, such brazen, undisguised untruths generally go unnoticed or are met with little more than a shrug of the shoulders. It may be that the public simply expects so little in the way of honesty from companies like Enbridge that we’ve all but given up on being outraged by instances of dishonesty. For example, no one in the press (or anywhere else), as far as we know, has taken any interest at all in Enbridge’s revisionist history about the date of the Marshall spill. We find this baffling and deeply disturbing. Wouldn’t you think that some dogged reporter somewhere would just want to call Brad Shamla on the phone and ask the simple question: “How can you say, on the one hand, that you don’t want to erase Marshall from your memory while, on the other hand, you deliberately pretend the day the rupture occurred was the day after it occurred?”
Worse than apathy or cynicism, however, is the fact that there are still a lot of people– local officials, journalists, newspaper editorial boards, ordinary landowners– who actually do believe things that Enbridge tells them. That’s bad and has severe consequences. It’s bad because it can leave landowners unprotected (because, say, they didn’t think they needed to hire an attorney). Bad because newspapers might type up whatever Enbridge says (and thereby misinform the public). Bad because elected officials and regulatory agencies will accept Enbridge’s word on important matters (and leave the public interest unprotected).
But the evidence (above and all throughout our archives) shows that you can’t believe the things Enbridge says, that you can’t take them at their word. And that’s why we think it is very important–imperative– to demonstrate as clearly and factually as possible when and how and why Enbridge can NOT be trusted. It’s why we continue to be outraged by false and misleading statements. Because those statements are not inconsequential; they have very real effects out in the world, your world. Our (perhaps futile) hope is that if we keep pointing them out, maybe eventually people– landowners, journalists, politicians, regulators– will be a little less trusting in the future.
by Jeffrey Insko | Feb 25, 2014 |
On Saturday, a Canadian television report on Enbridge’s proposed Line 9 reversal in Canada got us thinking (yet again!) about Enbridge’s habit of alienating landowners and municipalities by failing to do what one would think is the easiest thing in the world: just being honest, straightforward, and forthright. But for some reason, that is something that is extremely difficult for them.
We were also reminded of that fact a couple of weeks ago, when we read the latest on Enbridge’s quest to secure a dredge pad site for their work on Morrow Lake. On Monday, the Comstock Township Planning Commission finally gave Enbridge approval, with conditions, for a new site. We don’t know the first thing about the new location and are therefore in no position to comment on its suitability. We are inclined, however, to give the Planning Commission and Comstock Township Supervisor Ann Nieuwenhuis the benefit of the doubt on this one.
In order to secure the site, however, Enbridge evidently decided they needed to bring in the big guns, so they sent Vice President of Operations Rich Adams to speak with some Comstock Township residents the week before the Planning Commission meeting. The circumstances of that meeting (as reported by MLive), and Adams’s comments to the press, struck us as absolutely emblematic of the way Enbridge “communicates” with the public. Let’s see how Adams operates according to the Enbridge communications playbook:
1. Carefully control and manage the setting. One of the first things we ever learned about Enbridge was just how reluctant they are to engage the public when they can’t dictate the precise terms and conditions under which that engagement takes place. VP Mark Sitek more or less conceded as much when he told us they worry about being “ambushed” at public meetings. That fear is also why Enbridge reps once told us they were trying to find “the right person” for us to talk to. And it’s surely why Enbridge spokesperson Graham White fabricated a story about Emily Ferguson as some kind of “combative” “activist” raising cain at a public meeting– because like an elephant cowering before a mouse, Enbridge, despite its overwhelming wealth, power, and influence, seems to live in fear of anyone who might confront them with even the mildest word of criticism.
This need to control the setting in which communication takes place is also surely why, as MLive reports, the “informational session” at Comstock Township was “invite-only.” We suspect that that the invitation only idea was Enbridge’s and that, going into the meeting, they were very careful to make sure that they created a situation that would protect Rich Adams as much as possible from any of those scary angry citizens.
2. Never listen; always condescend and dismiss. We also learned quite early on that Enbridge’s style of communication consists almost entirely of attempts to explain itself, not to listen or solicit feedback or cultivate dialogue or consider other points of view than their own and certainly not to engage in any kind of honest self-reflection. We’ve seen this over and over, both in our conversations with Enbridge reps and in their dealings with various municipalities, particularly with Brandon Township. This tendency is part and parcel with Enbridge’s generally dismissive attitude toward anyone who criticizes them.
Adams applies this principle when he explains what went wrong the last time Enbridge tried (and failed) to secure a dredge pad site. He says, “I think that’s what happened the first time around — in terms of us not getting approval — I don’t think we provided the education.” This is a rather extraordinary account of what happened last time. According to Adams, it’s not that Larry Bell and other Comstock residents had legitimate and reasonable concerns about the other dredge pad site; it’s not that Enbridge tried to circumvent the approval process; it’s not that Enbridge failed to consult with Comstock Township authorities. Adams dismisses (by failing to acknowledge) all of those concerns. By his account, the problem “the first time around” was all because Enbridge just didn’t provide the proper education– which is really just his condescending way of saying that all of those people– Larry Bell, Comstock residents, Township officials– just didn’t (or don’t) understand. We can’t help but wonder: does he really believe that? Which leads us to one final principle of Enbridge communication with the public:
3. When in doubt, dissemble. This one is generally the province of Enbridge’s spokespersons and its marketing team; we’ve noted numerous examples over the past couple of years. But even those at the very top at Enbridge are prone to unfair or distorted characterizations of people and situations. Adams himself tried to peddle a pretty distorted account of the dredge pad situation to the EPA late last year.
So what is Adams saying now? Well, this is what he said at the recent Comstock informational meeting: “We were in a real tight timeline and were trying to push it through a little fast and this time we were kind of afforded the opportunity to do it right and kind of present that information.” That is one way to put it, we suppose, if you don’t want to face the realities of the situation or take responsibility for what brought you to this point. We’re especially fond of the part where he says that Enbridge was “kind of afforded the opportunity to do it right”– as if circumstances, rather than their own actions and decisions, prevented them from doing it right the first time; as if an already broken EPA deadline and an order to keep working is just “an opportunity,” as opposed to a responsibility or an obligation; and as if they’ll only do things right when given the opportunity, not as a matter of routine or regular practice.
by Jeffrey Insko | Feb 20, 2014 |
This week, we received a corrected– and accurate– 1099 tax form from Enbridge, along with an accompanying letter that says they issued SIX THOUSAND incorrect forms (frankly, we’re shocked that they would admit such a thing). So it appears Line 6B landowners aren’t the only ones affected this latest Enbridge gaffe, though it also appears that they’ve straightened it out. We’re assuming you have also received a corrected form; if not, please let us know. More importantly, you should let Enbridge know.
While we’ve got you, here are a few other quick news items worth noting:
by Jeffrey Insko | Jan 19, 2014 |
Yesterday, we wrote about Graham White’s gratuitous comments about our Canadian friend Emily Ferguson in Jessica McDiarmid’s outstanding Toronto Star series “All Along the Pipeline”. As far as we know, he has yet to write to Emily with the apology he obviously owes her, and it might not be coming very soon, since he’s probably quite busy fielding phone calls about the latest Enbridge oil spill. But while we wait, we thought we’d add just a few more comments on the matter, which while seemingly small, illustrates some much larger problems with the way that Enbridge deals with the public. The contempt that White displays toward Emily Ferguson is not just some isolated incident; it’s an attitude that seems to be endemic to Enbridge.
In this follow-up, we’d just like to highlight a couple of points about this matter. Yesterday, we asked a series of rhetorical questions about White’s remark, asking among other things, whether and how Graham White could possibly have known anything about Emily’s demeanor or behavior at the informational meeting in question, which was held in Conservation Halton back in March of last year. The answer to that question, just to be clear, is that he couldn’t. He doesn’t. For one thing, Graham White wasn’t even at the meeting (at least not according to the official minutes from the meeting, which list the Enbridge representatives in attendance). For another thing, Emily never gave her name to any Enbridge representatives at that meeting. There is no way anybody from Enbridge could possibly know whether she was “abrupt and confrontational” at the meeting because there is no way for anybody from Enbridge to have even known she was there in the first place. Therefore, this can only lead to one conclusion:
Graham White is simply making things up.
Or if he’s not, we’d sure like to hear his explanation of how he knows that Emily was at that meeting acting all abrupt and confrontational-like. Perhaps he’s psychic.
Now, that’s pretty bad. What’s so very bizarre about it, however, is that it’s completely unnecessary. That is, we understand that Graham White has to say something when a reporter asks him a question; that’s his job. But he doesn’t have to make things up. And he certainly doesn’t have to try and portray Emily as some sort of unreasonable rabble-rouser. Frankly, we don’t really want to tell Graham White how to do his job, but this doesn’t seem particularly complicated. It’s not hard to imagine any number of other things he could have said in reply to a reporter’s question about Emily Ferguson. For example:
- He could have just been honest. Like this: “I wasn’t at the meeting in question and therefore I am in no position to comment on what happened there.”
- Or if straightforward honesty isn’t his cup of tea (and it appears not to be), he could have just been evasive. Like this: “It is not Enbridge corporate policy to ask for identification at informational meetings. We provide information freely to all members of the public.”
- Or, even better, he could have given an answer in keeping with Enbridge’s corporate values (“Maintain truth in all interactions,” “Do the right thing; do not take the easy way out,” “Take accountability for our actions, without passing blame to others.”) Like this: “We regret that Ms. Ferguson was asked by one of our representatives for identification. That is not our policy and it should not have happened. We regret our mistake and apologize to Ms. Ferguson.”
That last answer– the high road answer– would have cost Graham White and Enbridge nothing. And it would have made them look good (or at least better than they look right now). It would have made them look like they walk the walk, like they really do adhere to the values they profess guide their conduct. It might even have made Emily Ferguson feel slightly better about the whole unfortunate incident. Perhaps it would have opened the door to a more productive, less combative relationship with citizens who have serious concerns about the Line 9 reversal project.
But Enbridge doesn’t seem to want any of that. They don’t seem to want to be guided by those values. They don’t seem to want to walk the walk. They don’t seem to want to cultivate better relations with ordinary citizens and their critics. They don’t seem to want to be less combative. Of course, this is all ground we have covered before (again and again and again). Enbridge’s failure– or more precisely, its apparent inability– to live up to its own stated values runs deep. It’s almost as if those values aren’t there as guides to its employees’ conduct, but as things to be studiously avoided.
by Jeffrey Insko | Jan 16, 2014 |
We’re playing catch-up today; strangely, 2014 has started out rather eventfully. Earlier today, we made a few remarks about the construction accident and its aftermath that took place on David Gallagher’s property. Among other things, it has yielded a rather troubling he said/she said situation. Needless to say, we have grave doubts about what Enbridge says about the incident.
But there’s been plenty of news otherwise:
Jennifer Bowman over at the Battle Creek Enquirer– who more or less owns the Enbridge Line 6B “replacement” project story these days– wrote an excellent piece on ongoing landowner troubles that appeared over the weekend. Among other things, we were grateful for her recognition that Enbridge’s problems with landowners run far deeper than just the terrible Gallagher situation (which certainly deserves the attention it’s gotten). These are systemic problems, not isolated ones. We even have a few things to say ourselves in the article.
But by far the most, um, interesting comments in Jennifer’s piece come from Jason Manshum. Recently, we’ve had some productive exchanges with Jason and are hopeful that they are a step toward some better communications with Enbridge. We don’t want to jeopardize that. But we still have to tell the truth. And the truth is that Manshum’s comments are so inapt that it’s not really clear just what in the hell he is talking about:
Manshum said the company has been working with landowners since before construction began, going over details and negotiating compensation. Property owners are each assigned a land agent to work with on a regular basis, he said.
“Those conversations begin long before construction,” said Manshum. “They continue during construction and once we go through hydro testing and the final restoration, those conversations will still be ongoing. Because at the end of it, we will go through the list of everything we outlined in the beginning with each landowner and check off the list to ensure that we have actually everything to the homeowner’s satisfaction.”
We understand that journalistic protocol requires Jennifer Bowman, who is a real pro, to solicit some kind of statement from Enbridge, but it has to be as painful for her to type up that sort of thing as it is for us to read it. At this point in the project, after all that has gone on, after all that’s been discussed, demonstrated, and documented with regard to Enbridge’s dealings with landowners is there anybody on the planet who thinks such hollow boilerplate is even remotely helpful or even the slightest bit honest?
In other Line 6B news, remember the protests that took place over the summer? The dude that skateboarded his way into a stretch of pipe? the group that chained themselves to some Enbridge construction equipment? Last week, hearings were held in both cases. The results were mixed. In the case of Chris Wahmhoff, who spent a day inside an Enbridge pipe, a Calhoun County Circuit Court Judge dismissed the charges against him. Wahmhoff celebrated the good news by immediately announcing his candidacy for U.S. Senate. Yes, you heard that right: Wahmhoff is running for the U.S. Senate seat recently vacated by Carl Levin. Jennifer Bowman (who sure keeps busy!) has that story as well. And here’s more from the good folks at the DeSmog Blog. Unfortunately, Wahmhoff’s legal troubles may not be over. Evidently, Calhoun County Prosecutor David Gilbert is seeking to re-issue charges agains Wahmhoff, or so MiLive reports. What Gilbert thinks the citizens of Calhoun County or the state of Michigan could possibly gain from the prosecution of Wahmhoff is completely beyond us.
The news is not quite as good for the other four protestors. An Ingham County Judge has refused to dismiss charges against them. But apparently, simply allowing the prosecution to continue wasn’t enough for Judge William Collette. He also decided to take it upon himself to make some oddly petulant and legally irrelevant remarks. First, according to MiLive, there was this:
“I am tired of people coming in here seeking publicity for themselves,” he said and criticized the defendants and their supporters for organizing court protests. “I don’t like that.”
Then, as if that weren’t weren’t crotchety enough, he added this:
Collette said he is not unsympathetic to an environmental cause or environmental necessity. If someone were charged with trespassing for going out and stopping an oil leak, he would toss out such a charge.
If people think attaching themselves to machinery will change a corporate or government “mode of operation,” it is not going to happen, he said.
Now we’re not really sure why Judge Collette thinks anyone wants to hear his personal opinions about the effectiveness of various forms of protest and agitation for social change. Maybe he’s auditioning for a gig as a talk radio host. Or maybe there is an Ingham County law that we don’t know about prohibiting wrongheaded ideas about what will change corporate modes of operation. But if there is no such statute, then maybe Judge Collette should just keep his non-legal views to himself and focus on administering the law. In the meantime, we hope the protestors’ legal team can find a way to persuade the Court to let this matter drop.
Looking beyond Line 6B, you might also remember the recent letter that Senators Stabenow, Levin, and Dick Durbin of Illinois sent to PHMSA regarding concerns about Enbridge’s proposal to increase capacity on Line 5 running through the Straits of Mackinac. Well, PHMSA has written a letter to the senators in response. The letter reads, in its entirety:
Dear Senators.
It’s all good. Don’t you worry your pretty little heads about this.
Sincerely,
PHMSA
Okay, maybe that’s not really the letter. But it may as well be. If you want to read the thing yourself, it’s here. PHMSA has very little to say other than to try and pacify Stabenow, Levin, and Durbin. Needless to say, it’s cold comfort for anyone who has serious concerns about Line 5 and the protection of the Great Lakes. For more, SURF on over to Beth Wallace’s blog where she discusses the letter in a little more detail, calling it– with devastating accuracy– mostly “jibber jabber.”
Finally, word last week from the EPA is that they are now considering enforcement options against Enbridge for the company’s failure to meet its dredging deadline. You will recall that in a desperate, dishonest attempt to buy more time following its own ham-handed attempts to have its way in Comstock Township, the EPA denied Enbridge’s request for an extension to complete the work. As a result, they’ve missed their Dec. 31st deadline and will likely face fines. Stiff ones? That remains to be seen.
by Jeffrey Insko | Jan 3, 2014 |
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
9. Pet Coke
8. Red Herrings
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.
by Jeffrey Insko | Jan 2, 2014 |
Welcome to 2014 everybody! In the spirit of the New Year, we’re taking a bit of time to look back by counting down our Top Ten posts of the year that just was. If you missed the bottom five, you can read about them here. But just to recap them quickly:
10. Line 6B Earns Pulitzer Prize
9. Pet Coke
8. Red Herrings
7. How Not to Write About Line 6B
6. IJNR Kalamazoo River Institute
Now on to the final five:
5. PHMSA. Last summer, we were lucky enough to be invited by the National Wildlife Federation to participate in a lobbying “fly-in” to ask some of our elected officials to support the NWF petition seeking some new rules on pipeline safety from PHMSA. We also wanted to meet with PHMSA officials themselves, but they declined. This did not please us, especially since, in our view, PHMSA is already far too insulated from the concerns and viewpoints of ordinary citizens– as opposed to the concerns and viewpoints of industry. We’ll have much more to say about PHMSA in 2014, especially once we return to writing about the PS Trust conference last November. And we are likely to once again adopt the tone of this post that we wrote upon our return from the D.C. trip.
4. Enbridge Thinks EPA is Stupid. Among the more astonishing Enbridge blunders of the last year was their hapless, thoughtless, tone-deaf, corner-cutting attempt to secure a dredge-site plan in Comstock Township so that they could complete the Kalamazoo River cleanup according to the deadline set by the Environmental Protection Agency. In addition to attempting to skirt local zoning ordinances, they also managed to agitate the owner of one of the state’s best breweries and as a result found themselves in a bit of a pickle. Then, in order to get out of the pickle they found themselves in, Enbridge Vice President Richard Adams went and crafted one of the most desperate, disingenuous, counter-factual, values-violating letters imaginable to the EPA asking for more time– as if the EPA were somehow completely unaware of the facts on the ground. Fortunately, the EPA turned out not to be as blind, gullible, and stupid as Enbridge evidently thought they were.
3. Why Enbridge Can’t Do Better. If you just went and re-visited that little episode, you might be wondering to yourself, as we have on countless occasions, why in the world Enbridge conducts itself this way, why they can’t just do things right, why they can’t act according to– not in opposition to– their professed values. This is something we’ve pondered long and hard, far too much really. In fact, it’s something we’re going to ponder some more in the next week or so as we tell you a little about Enbridge’s just-released “Corporate Social Responsibility Report” for the past year. But back in June, we pondered it somewhat systematically in a series of posts that considered a number of possible theories for why Enbridge behaves the way it does. We’re not sure we arrived at any clear conclusions– but we think our hypothesis rests on some pretty firm evidentiary and experiential ground.
2. Enbridge Re-writes Michigan Law. One would reasonably think, after a disaster like the Marshall spill and all we know about its causes, that public officials and regulatory agencies would scrutinize the company responsible for the disaster very carefully, that those same officials and agencies would be skeptical, hyper-vigilant, extra-tough. But one would be wrong– at least here in Michigan. From the governors (outgoing and incoming) on down, almost no one in a position of authority at the state level uttered a word when Enbridge launched its “replacement” project. Frankly, in our view those officials– especially the Governor– are partially responsible for the nightmare so many landowners have had to endure over the past two years. Or, if we’re being generous, perhaps it’s just that they believed the Michigan Public Service Commission, the agency responsible for approving pipeline projects and entrusted with the solemn power to bestow upon private corporations the power of eminent domain, would do its job.
But one of the biggest stories of the past year is the story of how the MPSC did NOT do its job, failing miserably to protect the public interest and playing the role of Enbridge’s flunky. This became clear during the Phase Two MPSC proceedings, which we covered and wrote about at length, mainly in this series detailing the laughable efforts of their public engineer, the MPSC staff attorney’s seeming advocacy for Enbridge’s arguments, the Administrative Law Judge’s background and Enbridge-friendly rulings, the gloating, mean-spirited, unprofessional final ruling, and more. Frankly (if you’ll forgive us for saying so), we think it’s the most important stuff we’ve written. That’s because, procedurally speaking, in Michigan the MPSC is the only line of defense for landowners and the environment. But rather than working for us, they went to bat for Enbridge. How that happened is a disturbing tale that was never really covered in any detail in the press (save for Inside Climate News). So if we had to choose just one single post that we wrote in 2013 that everyone should read, just one post that Beth Wallace’s mom should send around in one of her promotional blitzes, it would be this one. In it, we explain how Michigan public officials, along with a local Michigan law firm (Fraser Trebilcock Davis & Dunlap) worked together to sell out their fellow citizens to a Canadian corporation and its industry colleagues for years to come.
And yet, not even that vitally important story is #1 on our list. What could possibly top that? We’ll let you know in a final installment coming soon!
by Jeffrey Insko | Aug 23, 2013 |
While Enbridge works hard this week to woo the press (much more on this coming up later), they’re also taking some lumps. Comstock Township, like the EPA last week, has considered Enbridge’s request and then told them “no.” Late last night the Township Planning Commission voted unanimously to deny Enbridge special zoning for a dredge pad as they continue to clean up the Kalamazoo River. Lindsey Smith at Michigan Public Radio has the story. Evidently, residents and Bell’s Brewery owner Larry Bell were mighty pleased with the outcome.
Because we don’t know enough about the issue, we never really took a strong position on the dredge pad matter, except to say that in general we think it’s good policy to defer to local authority and community desires on such matters. We’re pretty big fans of local autonomy when it comes to the protection of landowners and natural resources. In fact, Enbridge’s callous disregard of local authority and concerns has been one of the major themes of this blog for more than a year. With that in mind, we’ll indulge in one little observation:
It now appears that Enbridge is going to have real trouble meeting the EPA mandated deadline for this latest round of clean up. And they probably think it’s all Larry Bell’s fault. But they have no one to blame but themselves. This dredge pad situation is a nearly identical replay of what happened on phase one of their project. They tried (despite their stated values) to take the easy way out and circumvent local ordinances. And what happened? Just like in Comstock Township, some brave local officials and concerned citizens cried foul, causing Enbridge to slow down, then scramble to make nice so they could resume their work after some long and painful (to Enbridge) delays. The result? The whole thing took far more time and created far more acrimony and bad feelings than it would (or should) have if Enbridge had simply gone about it thoughtfully, respectfully, and cooperatively in the first place.
In this context, the Comstock Township just demonstrates yet again that Enbridge appears incapable of learning from its mistakes.
by Jeffrey Insko | Aug 19, 2013 |
Update, August 20, 2013: Well, it turns out that what looked like a very big Enbridge whopper (details below) is actually just a run-of-the-mill bit of Enbridge misinformation. Reporter Tina Casagrand has the clarification from Enbridge in a comment to this post. We are glad for spokesperson Katie Lange’s sake that she wasn’t actually saying that the Marshall spill was the result of “something that was stuck in the pipe.” Unfortunately, the clarification doesn’t actually bring all that much clarity to the matter. Here’s why:
Enbridge now says that “the incident” to which Lange’s refers in her statement is the discharge that resulted from a hydrotest of the new Line 6B earlier this summer. (You might remember that we wrote about it at the time.) We’ll take them at their word on this. The problem, however, is that the statement is STILL inaccurate and even, it seems, rather disingenuous. The inaccurate part is that the incident did not take place in Marshall. Ore Creek is in Tyrone Township, Livingston County, nowhere near Marshall. The disingenuous part is that Lange says Enbridge didn’t “purposefully” violate the permit, suggesting instead that the violations were the result of something getting stuck. However, if you look at the violations-– there are ELEVEN of them– it’s hard to see how any of them could have been the result of something getting stuck in the line. For instance, (just to name a few) the DEQ cites Enbridge for not having any on-site representatives during the discharge, for not taking any samples of the discharge on June 17 (three days before the discharge), for not conducting water inspections as required the week before the discharge, and for not inspecting their equipment as required. As far as we can tell, none of these things have anything at all to do with something getting stuck in the pipe. So the question that remains is whether Enbridge failed to perform these required actions “purposefully,” as Lange claims. Maybe that’s a difficult thing to determine, we guess. But if the violations aren’t the result of an accident (and the evidence suggests they weren’t), and they were not purposeful, that only leaves one alternative: incompetence. That is not very comforting.
_____________________
Two very interesting stories appeared in newspapers today written by talented young reporters. Over at the St. Louis Beacon, Tina Casagrand has an excellent piece about Enbridge’s Flanagan South project. As we’ve noted before, this is another one of Enbridge’s clever schemes to out-Keystone Keystone XL. This line will head south through the midwest and eventually make it all the way to the coast. And the most disturbing part? Even though it crosses an international border, Enbridge has once again found a way to skirt the presidential permitting problem and avoid public scrutiny. And also once again, the project is mostly flying under the radar while almost all eyes remain fixed on KXL. This is one reason Tina’s piece (and others that have appeared before it) is so very important.
But the most extraordinary thing of all in the article– and, honestly, we thought we’d heard it all by now– is what Enbridge spokesperson Katie Lange has to say about the Marshall spill. If you’re not sitting down, you might want to. At least be sure you’re holding on to something solid. This whopper is even worse than the infuriatingly dishonest story Enbridge VP of Operations Richard Adams told to the EPA a couple of weeks ago. Okay. Are you ready? Here’s Lange on Marshall:
“For the incident in Marshall, it wasn’t that Enbridge purposefully violated, it was something that was stuck in the pipe,” added Lange.
Something stuck in the pipe?! We have long been baffled and angered by the misleading, disingenuous, obfuscatory, and inaccurate things that Enbridge spokespersons– the Larry Springers and Jennifer Smiths and Jason Manshums say. But this one has to take the cake. One can only wonder where in the world poor Katie Lange got that patently false piece of information. Surely she or someone at Enbridge will call Tina to correct it. Right?
The other interesting story today is from Ursula Zerilli over at MLive, who is following up on her article from last week. For some strange reason, Enbridge decided to get chummy with some reporters as they kick off phase two of the project and so (evidently) reporters got to ride around in a van with Tom Hodge and some others. But unlike last week’s article, in this one Ursula speaks with some Enbridge critics, among them our friend Dave Gallagher, whose situation as an affected landowner is a real nightmare– just get a load of the picture that accompanies the article! The article also features some remarks from inspector Raymond Ashley, who appears to have a real penchant for forced, mawkish metaphors:
“We are trying to weld more than just this pipe together,” said Raymond Ashley, who was proudly wearing a photo of his granddaughter as a badge. “We’re welding more than just a pipeline. We need to bond together the environment, safety and the integrity of this pipeline. We have one day to build integrity and that’s today.”
Anyway, while we think the article is accurate and fair (she even emphasizes Enbridge’s slow response to Marshall), it also left us a little dissatisfied for reasons that might be worth explaining in a bit of detail. The reason we’re dissatisfied– and we don’t really blame Ursula for this– is that the article lacks nuance. It lacks subtlety and complexity. Again, this isn’t really Ursula’s fault. We live in a (news) culture that likes simple binary narratives– us vs. them, black vs. white, good guys vs. bad guys. That’s what (or so editors seem to think) appeals to people. Making this even worse is that Ursula was probably only given about 800 words in which to tell her story– hard to be nuanced in such a short space. Yet nuance is important. Here’s why:
One comes away from the article with a simple dichotomy: there are pipeline proponents (like Tom Hodge and Enbridge) and there are pipeline opponents (the protestors from MICATS). They are the article’s protagonists and antagonists (we’ll let you decide who’s who!). But the problem with this narrative– which pits people who don’t want pipelines against people building pipelines– is that it is precisely the way that Enbridge wants to have this story framed. It’s why former Enbridge CEO likes to talk about “revolutionaries” and why Enbridge spokesman Larry Springer talks about “special interest groups.” That kind of story serves Enbridge’s interests perfectly because it allows them to sound reasonable and pragmatic, while casting everyone else as a little bit crazy, on the fringes, out of the mainstream. So, for instance, Tom Hodge gets to say things like this:
“It’s hard to understand their logic,” he said of those protesting the pipeline replacement project. “It seems like they want us to turn the pipeline off or just not replace this pipeline, which already ruptured. There’s not a good alternative to what we are doing and we feel like it’s a good thing for the State of Michigan.”
And this:
“There would be riots in the streets if food wasn’t being delivered or if fuel wasn’t being delivered,” he said. “I’m all for having an alternate fuel, but until that becomes available, there’s no other option. You can use natural gas but that has to come by pipeline, too. If that ruptures, it’s not a polluting event like oil … It’s a fireball.”
See how that works? Hodge makes it sound like the alternatives are clear and stark: EITHER Enbridge gets to build whatever pipelines it wants to build however it wants to build them OR there will be riots in the streets because people are starving. I mean, what kind of person would be in favor of people starving?!
But here’s the thing: that is complete and total and utter nonsense. It is a ridiculously false choice. Those are quite plainly NOT the only alternatives. People are not going to starve and riot in the street if Enbridge does not get to pump 800,000 barrels of tar sands oil a day across Michigan through a shiny new Line 6B. No serious person believes any such thing. And yet Hodge gets to imply as much and, in doing so, also gets to come off as the person who is being rational and realistic.
And that’s not even the worst part. The other reason this simplistic (and largely false) narrative of people in favor of the pipeline vs. people opposed to the pipeline serves Enbridge so well is because it allows them to evade the real substance of most of the real criticism of the way they have conducted themselves in Michigan over the past three years (or more). As we have said over and over and over and over again (so often we don’t even have the energy to provide links anymore), the problem isn’t that they’re replacing Line 6B. The problem is how they’ve gone about it. Most of us do not oppose the “replacement” of the line– a new pipe is obviously better than an aging pipe. That has NEVER been the issue. What we object to is the way that Enbridge has cleverly skirted federal regulations, the way they have abused their easement rights and mistreated landowners and trampled property rights, the way they have misinformed people, the way they have flouted or ignored local authority and thrown their weight around, the way they have essentially re-written Michigan law to serve their own financial interests. All that plus the fact that we have a bunch of elected officials and a set of pathetically weak regulatory systems that allows all of this to continue.
Those are the real issues. And they are issues that affect and therefore ought to concern all the citizens of the state of Michigan. To pretend otherwise– to pretend that it’s a simple matter of energy production vs. a handful of environmental radicals– does nothing but allow Enbridge to avoid having to face any of the things I’ve described, to avoid ever being confronted with genuinely tough questions. So once again, as always, Enbridge gets exactly what it wants.
by Jeffrey Insko | Aug 15, 2013 |
As we’ve said before, we can imagine that Enbridge, thin-skinned as they are, probably thinks that we are overly-critical, probably to the point of being unfair, that we nitpick, that we dwell on the negative. Maybe that’s true– although we think it’s a pretty big deal when, for example, they tell dishonest stories to the EPA. And anyway, we can’t help it that they keep giving us so many nits to pick. Perhaps they should stop that.
But in fairness, we do try to call ’em like we see ’em and that means when they do something right, we should say so– even though it seems a little silly to heap a lot of praise on them for doing the basic things they’re supposed to do. Still, with all that as preface, here’s a positive story:
After months and months of the right of way and workspace in our backyard sitting around empty and untended, to no one’s surprise weeds have taken over. Lots and lots of weeds. Just look:
When reclamation crews appeared late last week to start cleaning up, we were more than a little bothered to learn that their standard procedure is to just plow these weeds under– which really just guarantees that they’ll return. Now it may be that to most people, that’s no big deal. But to us, that’s a real problem; it’s been a source of concern for us from day one (as we explained a long time ago), not to mention an ongoing problem.
Unfortunately, we had to make about five different phone calls before we were able to convince anybody that this was a serious matter worth addressing. But once we got through to Enbridge, they did snap right into action. In fact, on Monday, we met with a whole bunch of them– our land agent, guys from the construction crew, the environmental inspector, and a couple of others: a whole cavalry! And together, we arrived at a perfectly satisfactory solution to the weed problem. We are grateful to all of them for taking the time to come out and address it; they were serious and helpful and genuinely seemed to want to work with us We especially thank the environmental inspector (he’s actually a non-Enbridge employee), who has always been helpful to us, and the construction foreman on the job, who seems to be a terrific guy, responsive and very professional. We have long said (without the least bit of surprise) that the construction workers on this job are a fine, courteous, and good bunch of people; we’ve enjoyed meeting lots of them, despite the circumstances.
Bottom line: once we finally got through to them (and frankly, it could and should have been easier), Enbridge was responsive to our desires on the weed matter. We appreciate it.
by Jeffrey Insko | Dec 11, 2023 |
Part 3: The Commission Speaks
Last week, in part 2 of my new series on the MPSC’s Line 5 decision, I wrote about relations. Or rather, I wrote about how the rules of the MPSC proceedings are designed to sever relations, to deny relations, to ignore relations, to pretend like things that are inextricably connected are somehow not connected at all. This kind of partitioning, I argued, effectively doomed the proceedings from the start, since that narrow way of thinking about the matter is exactly how Enbridge wanted the Commission to look at the matter. Even worse is the fact that Enbridge didn’t really need to persuade the MPSC to adopt their narrow view; the MPSC also prefers to look at things narrowly. It helps them evade accountability.
In this the third installment of my series on the MPSC decision, I planned to take up another dimension of that narrow view. But then on Friday, as if on cue, one of the Commissioners, Dan Scripps, illustrated the point of my previous blog post perfectly. So I’m afraid this series just got a little longer; the discussion of harm and violence I promised will have to wait until later in the week. You see, we have to talk about Dan Scripps.
If you missed it, Scripps appeared on WDET radio’s Detroit Today with Stephen Henderson to discuss the Commission’s decision. To his credit, Scripps appears to recognize that Line 5 poses a serious risk to the Great Lakes. And in justifying the Commission’s decision to approve Enbridge’s application, Scripps leaned heavily on the idea that the tunnel “virtually eliminates the risk of an anchor strike and is a much safer option and more protective of the Great Lakes than what exists today.”
I’m sure that sounds like a quite reasonable view to a lot of people. The problem is that it’s a view that, among other things, is astonishingly short-sighted. Scripps talks about the tunnel as if it’s simply going to materialize overnight, like slipping one’s arm into the sleeve of a new shirt. But the reality is that this “safer option” is at least ten years away from getting built, probably more. Enbridge’s estimates on how long tunnel construction might take certainly can’t be trusted. And ten years from now, at the current rate of global greenhouse emissions, we will have reached the dangerous global warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial temperatures. The visible and inescapable effects of reaching that limit will make a billion-dollar investment in fossil fuel infrastructure look even more reckless and foolhardy than it does now.
But that explanation for the MPSC decision was hardly the most striking thing about the interview. In fact, one statement Scripps made nearly caused me to crash my car. Here’s what he said:
We [the MPSC] didn’t get a say in whether or not the tunnel gets built.
It’s hard to know if Scripps believes what he’s saying here. But regardless, his remark displays how absurd it is to try and separate that things that can’t possibly be separated. “Who has what responsibility in this process?” he went on to ask, in what seemed like an attempt to distance the MPSC from its decision. He explained that the agencies responsible for approving the tunnel are the Michigan Straits Corridor Authority and the Department of Energy, Great Lakes, and the Environment. The MPSC, he continued, was only tasked with the question of whether to approve the relocation of Line 5 inside that tunnel. “The actual question of building the tunnel wasn’t for us,” Scripps demurred, “That’s the Straits Corridor Authority.”
Now, in the strictest, most technical sense, what Scripps said on the radio is true. The MSCA and EGLE are the agencies charged with approval and oversight of the tunnel. And as per the ruling of the Administrative Law Judge in the MPSC case, the Commission was charged only with approval of the re-route of the portion of Line 5 inside the tunnel, not with approving tunnel construction itself. So sure, on a purely formal level—that is, in terms of which agency issues which permit—the MPSC didn’t get a say in whether or not the tunnel gets built.
But that technical, formal distinction is completely nonsensical. It is nonsensical because the re-route and the tunnel are inextricable; they’re a package deal. After all, it’s not as though Enbridge would construct a tunnel without permission to put a pipeline inside of it. The re-route, in other words—the specific decision before the MPSC—was the precondition for tunnel construction. No re-route, no tunnel. Which means that despite Scripps’s attempt to pretend otherwise by relying on an absurd technicality, “the actual question of building the tunnel” was absolutely the question before the MPSC. The MPSC had all the say as to whether the tunnel gets built.
But Scripps wasn’t done. He then went on to explain that the MPSC is guided by a Michigan law, Act 16 from 1929. Under that Act, Scripps said, the Commission had to consider three questions: is there a need for the line? Is the route reasonable? And does it meet or exceed safety standards? According to Scripps, the answer to all three of these questions in the eyes of the MPSC is: yes.[i]
There’s just one problem here: there is nothing in Act 16—nothing whatsoever—that confines the MPSC to those three questions. In fact, those three questions, questions treated as utterly binding by the Administrative Law Judge who oversaw the case, by the MPSC Staff, and by Dan Scripps and his fellow Commissioners, don’t appear anywhere at all in Act 16. Nowhere. Yet strict adherence to those three questions is the source of all those exclusions I wrote about last week, exclusions that precluded the intervenors in the case from introducing their most powerful and important arguments into the record.
So what does Act 16 say, you might be wondering? Well, to put it in layman’s language, basically it says the MPSC can consider whatever the hell it wants. It gives the Commission very broad authority to establish its own rules and regulations. In fact, the language of the law itself is exactly the opposite of the narrow view taken by the very Commission to which the law grants authority. Here, for example, is Section 8 of Act 16:
The commission is hereby authorized and empowered to make all rules, regulations, and orders, necessary to give effect to and enforce the provisions of this act.
That’s it. No explicit restrictions on the scope of review of an application. Not a bunch of limitations on what the Commission can and cannot consider. Nothing about any three-part test. And the worst part of all of this? That narrow framework, stated so clearly by Dan Scripps last week as the sole criteria by which the MPSC is to be guided in its decision-making: it is almost entirely an Enbridge invention. I recounted that history right here on this blog a full decade ago.
But nobody, it seems, is reading Act 16; they’re only reading Enbridge’s self-serving interpretation of it. Which is a shame because if you were to read all of Act 16, you might come across something else it says, like this in section 2b:
A pipeline company shall make a good-faith effort to minimize the physical impact and economic damage that result from the construction and repair of a pipeline.
If you’re like me, the phrase that stands out here is “good-faith effort.” Enbridge has exerted a great deal of effort on a great many things here in Michigan over the past decade. But very few of them have been undertaken in good faith. Just spend some time in the archives of this blog; it’s ten years of carefully documented examples of Enbride’s bad-faith efforts.
Which, to return to the thesis of this series, is yet another problem with the system: it appears to include no mechanism which can account for and contend with bad-faith actors. It presumes, rather than interrogates, the good faith of applicants like Enbridge. Intervenors can’t simply claim—or even show—that Enbridge has a long history of being full of shit, of lying to regulatory agencies of various kinds. That sort of intervention, too, according to the MPSC’s current procedures, would be “beyond the scope of review.”
[i] I want to note that the intervenors in the case produced many excellent arguments demonstrating how Enbridge’s plan does not satisfy these three criteria.
by Jeffrey Insko | Oct 6, 2023 |
The thing about spending more than a decade documenting Enbridge’s endless parade of fabrications, falsehoods, fibs, prevarications, dissemblings, distortions, deceptions, casuistries, inaccuracies, misinformationings, truth-stretchings, misleadingnesses, and ass-coverings is that there’s always another one.
Here’s the latest, courtesy of the National Wildlife Federation.
Feel free to peruse the archives here for countless more examples, like this one or this one or this one or this one or this one or this one and so many more…
by Jeffrey Insko | May 11, 2021 |
As you’ve probably heard, as of this Wednesday, Enbridge will be in open defiance of Michigan law. Six months ago, Governor Whitmer gave notice to Enbridge that the state was revoking its easement to operate Line 5 beneath the Straits of Mackinac. The...
