As we mentioned yesterday, we’re on our annual vacation in Minnesota. Now, you might think that would mean that we get a reprieve from Enbridge and oil pipeline related matters. But no. They evidently dog and hound us at every turn, wherever we go. For example, when we got out of bed yesterday and checked the local newspaper, this is what greeted us:
Yep, it appears that Minnesota regulators are every bit as weak and reluctant to protect the public interest as those in Michigan. Sigh. We’ve got a lot more to say about this matter — and about the Minnesota decision as one small piece of a larger Enbridge puzzle– in a separate post.
But right now, rather than looking forward, we’re doing a bit more reflection on the year that has been here at the Line 6B blog. As we said earlier this week, it’s our birthday or anniversary, one full year since we started this thing. So we’re looking back (a little sentimentally even). This morning, we’re going to kick off a series of posts on some of our “greatest hits” (if you’ll forgive us a bit of self-indulgent back-patting), some of the posts we’ve written that, in our view, merit some re-visiting. The Minnesota story reminds us one of those hits in particular– but we’re going to save that one for later.
Instead, we’ll start this year in review where it has to start, where everything Enbridge-related absolutely must begin, with the crucial context without which one can’t understand anything about what Enbridge is doing in Michigan (and beyond), with the document that anybody who thinks they have an opinion about Enbridge, critical or supportive, has to have read if they want to have any sort of credibility whatsoever, if they want to be taken seriously: The National Transportation Safety Board’s report on the Marshall spill.
The release of this report in July of last year– and our reading of it– is what changed us from frustrated landowners to critics and activists. Its parade of horrors, its litany of poor decisions, neglect, and inaction, all attributable to a dreadfully lax safety culture at Enbridge, will send chills down your spine.
So early on in the life of this blog, we did a series of posts on “Tales and Lessons” from the report, in which we not only summarized some of the more horrifying findings from the federal investigation into the Marshall disaster. We also considered how those tales appear to reveal some general truths about Enbridge that explain how they have conducted themselves during the course of the Line 6B “replacement” project– conduct and behavior we have continued to write about. In fact, looking back at this series nearly a year later, it’s extraordinary how often we have returned to the three basic problems with Enbridge that we then, via the NTSB report, identified. Here is just one example:
In the first post in that series, we told you about Enbridge’s failure to abide by its own safety protocol, known as 10-minute rule– a failure that greatly exacerbated the severity of the spill into Talmadge Creek. In disucssing this failure, we asked the question “Does Enbridge learn from its mistakes?” You can imagine what sort of answer we arrived at back then. But what is perhaps most striking to us looking back on that question now is that it turns out to be a question that we are still asking. In fact, in a pair of posts just last month, we asked what amounts to the very same question: why can’t Enbridge do better?
The fact that we’re still asking whether Enbridge learns from its mistakes nearly 12 months on suggests to us that the answer is perfectly obvious.
During this birthday/anniversary week, we’re reflecting a bit. And when we reflect on this past year, we don’t just think of all the mess, stress, destruction, and inconvenience– because this experience, strangely, has not been without compensation. We’re not talking about money (frankly, there hasn’t been nearly enough of that!). No, we’re talking about some of the fascinating things we’ve learned and done, though we’ve done some pretty fascinating things. We’re talking about all of the fantastic people we’ve met, in person and cybernetically; all of the friends we’ve made.
Now, this is a dangerous thing to do, since we run the risk of leaving someone out. But we’d like to give some heartfelt shout-outs. If we forget you, we apologize in advance. Nevertheless, we want to say that we are genuinely, truly, deeply grateful that we’ve gotten the chance to meet and know:
Carl Weimer, the Big Cheese
Rebecca Craven, brainiac
Beth Wallace, hero
Kim Savage, trench warrior
Jeff Axt, Brandon brawler
Josh Mogerman, water (and beer) watchdog
Ben Gotschall & Jane Kleeb, role models
Nate Pavlovic, prodigy
Anthony Swift & Sara Gosman, legal masterminds
Susan Connolly, Deb Miller, & Michelle Barlond Smith, K-zoo pugilists
Steve Hamilton, river baron
Kathy Thurman, model public steward
Mike Holmstrom, pipeline guru
Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, whale hunter
Mike O’Leary, wild lifer
Chris Wilson, Texas tornado
Sonia Grant, scholar
Lance Enderle, winner
Gary Field, intervenor
Jake McGraw, eco-activist
Dave Hasemyer & Lisa Song & Susan Bromley & Elana Schor & Dave Spratt & Rebecca Williams & Jack Lessenberry & Adam Hinterthuer & Morgan Sherburne & Lindsey Smith & Tiffany Stecker & Tina Casagrand, journos who give us hope (seriously, having spoken with those last four, all smart and at the very start of their careers, one actually does not despair for the future of American journalism)
And most of all, all our fellow landowners, the outspoken and the silent, who have put up with far more than they ever should have: Beth D & Donna T & Dave G & Carol B & Shannon & Linda K & Patricia & Amy N and all the others too numerous to mention who stop by and occasionally comment here & all those many others whom we’ve never even met.
Can you believe it? This week marks the one year anniversary of the Line 6B Citizens’ Blog. One full year! Can you believe it? We are finally growing up!
Well, technically, we launched the blog on June 27, but it was really the middle of July that we started blogging in earnest– even though we had no idea what we were doing and sort of floundered around unsure of what to say, clueless about blogging conventions (which we still don’t really understand that well), and shaky with the technology. It took us quite a while to find our sea legs. In fact, our early posts, like, say, this one, weren’t really posts at all.
So to kick off our birthday celebration, we made a return visit to the Enbridge offices. But this time we didn’t pop in for a chat. We’re quite certain that Doug Aller and Mike Harris don’t want (or aren’t willing) to talk with us. But here we are; Sam got to get out of the car this time:
Over the next week or so, we’re going to reflect upon the past year, re-visit some of our “greatest hits” (if you’ll indulge us), and look toward some new directions for this blog (most of which will have to do with some of Enbridge’s new ventures).
So light some candles, hang some decorations, bake a cake– but no gifts, please!– and join us in celebration. We’ve decided to keep this blogging thing going for a while longer!
Well, once again, things aren’t going so well for Enbridge– and they only have themselves to blame. As usual, Inside Climate News has more details on the story of Enbridge’s violations of a DEQ permit (and we’re so glad to see that David Hasemyer is back on the case!) while discharging water from their hydrotest into Ore Creek. As we noted before, our friend Jake McGraw blew the lid off this matter with his disturbing video of rust-colored water fouling the creek.
We were pleased to see Tyrone Township Supervisor Mike Cunningham talking tough about Enbridge (and we hope he’s backing that tough talk up):
“They think they can come in and do it their way without regard to the local and state rules,” said Tyrone Township Supervisor Mike Cunningham. “But they have to follow the rules.”
The township and Cunningham have butted heads with Enbridge for a year over whether the company should be required to follow local zoning regulations.
“They sometime take for granted they can do what they want,” Cunningham said. “They’ve dropped the ball so many times and they dropped the ball on this one.”
And we were bemused to by the (unsurprising) evasions of our old pal Enbridge spokesman Larry Springer. He’s full of banalities, of course, but Hasemyer points out more than once that Springer and Enbride have no explanation whatever for why they didn’t take the simple measures (like having an on-site monitor) required of them by the DEQ permit. Hasemyer also quotes our friend and fellow landowner Dave Gallagher, who nails it when he says, “It makes you think in terms of their long-term concern for the environment and the people who have to live with their pipeline in their backyards.”
But the money quote comes from the inimitable Carl Weimer, Executive Director of the Pipeline Safety Trust:
Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, a nonprofit watchdog organization based in Bellingham, Wash., said the incident signals a disconnect between the public image pipeline operators try to promote and the reality of their conduct.
“It doesn’t take many times hearing their PR people say ‘We are going above and beyond the regulations’ and come to find out they aren’t,” Weimer said. “It doesn’t take many of those instances when the reality is different from the promises to undermine the public’s trust.”
Weimer said the nation’s pipeline regulations aren’t that onerous and companies like Enbridge can easily afford to comply with them.
“They keep messing up on things they should be doing right,” he said. “It’s one of my frustrations that the industry has the resources and the technology to comply and they choose not to do so.
Elsewhere, Midwest Energy News has a fascinating and important story this week about yet another Enbridge strategy to build a Keystone XL-like network of pipelines to the Gulf Coast. We’ve been talking about Enbridge’s under-the-radar, permit-evading strategies for months, trying (mostly in vain) to get some of the eyeballs focused so intensely on KXL to turn in Enbridge’s directions. Karen Uhlenhuth’s fine article should be getting a great deal of attention. The bottom line: Enbridge has found yet another loophole that may allow them to escape public scrutiny and regulatory oversight:
Enbridge is trying to use a regulatory shortcut known as Nationwide Permit 12 that might allow it to get its pipe in the ground before it provokes the sort of opposition now marshaled against Keystone XL.
Credit for uncovering this “shortcut” goes to the Sierra Club, which is working hard to bring the details of this project to light.
There is also more news this week on the bizarre scheme to get Enbridge to purchase and remove Ceresco Dam. The Battle Creek Enquirer has the story.
And finally, this weekend’s rally at the Mackinac bridge is getting lots of well-deserved press. Let’s hope for a big turnout and lots of attention to the potential dangers to the Great Lakes posed by Enbridge’s aging pipe under the straits.
Or if you’d rather just make a phone call or write a letter, our marvelous friends at the Pipeline Safety Trust are working this week (and testifying before a congressional committee) on pointing out some serious deficiencies in a piece of legislation known as the “Natural Gas Pipeline Permitting Reform Act.” This is an industry-friendly, landowner-unfriendly bill designed to “streamline” the approval process for interstate pipelines. As you can imagine, the Trust– and we agree vehemently– thinks this is a bad idea. If you’ve read anything here about the pitiful state of federal pipeline regulations or the Michigan state regulatory process, you already know that the last thing these processes need is “streamlining” (which is really just another term for deregulation!). In our view, they are already WAY too streamlined. To take just one little example that we’re sure you’ll find alarming, the bill would simplify the process for eminent domain authorization, making it that much easier for private companies to take indiviuals’ property, severely limiting landowners’ ability to protect their rights. Members of the committee currently considering the bill can be found here. Please write to your representative and urge them to work on behalf of landowners and ordinary citizens, not large corporations!
First, a disclaimer: we know that plenty of people along the Line 6B route have it far worse than we do. We’ve said this numerous times. And this blog and our efforts to get Enbridge to shape up have never been about us or our personal situation. We tell stories about what’s happening in our backyard because it’s what’s closest to us (obviously); our difficulties are merely meant to stand for greater difficulties that so many others along this route have experienced.
Second, a second disclaimer: we are also aware that Enbridge is not in control of the weather. It’s true that they have the power to control creeks and rivers and that the product that runs through their pipe can eat islands (right, Josh Mogerman?), but we’re pretty sure they can’t control when and how much it rains.
And lately, it has rained a lot. Which brings us to the point of all of this: it evidently isn’t enough for Enbridge to destroy almost all of our trees and most of our perennial garden. It looks like they want to take what’s left before they leave as well. You see, after they installed the pipe (the first time) and began to restore our property, spreading new topsoil and all, they left a very large, empty slope. And with nothing planted in that enormous plot of dirt, that meant there is nothing to keep all of the water from rainfalls from running straight down into what’s left of our garden. And that’s not good. In other words, they may not be able to control the rain, but they should be able to control erosion and runoff.
It gets worse. As we’ve told you recently, Enbridge had to come back and tear up that plot of land all over again. They have re-installed and re-buried a long section of pipe. But they have not yet cleaned up, which means that right now, our topsoil is in one big pile, leaving only a large swath of subsoil. So now, when it rains– and it’s been raining a lot– all of that rainwater, mixed with lots of dirty subsoil, is draining right down into what’s left of our garden.
The result of all of this: well, plants are dying. Here’s what the last bit of our garden looks like today:
And here’s a close-up of some dying plants, which were doing just fine this spring:
Now, in this particular spot, heavy rains have caused puddles like this in the past; it’s a low spot in the yard. However, we can tell you that we’ve never had quite this much standing water and, even more certainly, that standing water has NEVER been nasty and brown.
Here’s a shot from behind, which shows the rivulets of runoff draining into our plants.
And perhaps worst of all, here is our cherry tree, which we planted a few years ago. Up until a month or so ago, it has been thriving. Now it is all but dead, from drowning.
And so it goes, one thing after another. Brace yourselves, phase 2 landowners. They’re coming your way.
It’s no secret that Michigan has had its troubles recently; the state, especially our economy, is in pretty rough shape in all sorts of ways. But we still love it here. And if you asked us for the two biggest reasons why, we would cite (1) its astonishingly beautiful natural resources: the Kalamazoo River! the Upper Peninsula!, Sleeping Bear Dunes! the thumb region!; and (2) its exciting and delicious variety of locally produced craft beer: Arcadia! Shorts! Right Brain! North Peak! Bell’s!
In the past few weeks, Enbridge has gone and messed with both of them.
Of course, they’ve been fouling up our natural resources, directly (the Marshall spill) and indirectly (the Detroit River’s pet coke mess), for a while now. But apparently, that’s not enough for them. Last week, we linked to a report and a video (taken by the indefatigable Jake McGraw, who deserves serious credit here) of the nasty-colored discharge from Enbridge’s Line 6B hydrotest pumping into Ore Creek. Well, the DEQ has now looked into the matter. And what did they discover? Well, they found Enbridge guilty of 11 violations– that’s right, ELEVEN– of their permit. You can view the notice here. Now this is truly extraordinary: with their track record in this state, with so many of us watching their every move, with all of the bad press and criticism they’ve received over the past three years and on this project in particular, with all of their statements about making things right and being good neighbors– with all of this and they STILL can’t just abide by some simple regulations? Here again is an occasion (these occasions seem never to end) to ponder the imponderable: why can’t Enbridge do better?
(Of course, in this instance, one reason they can’t do better is that they don’t really have to. After all, what repercussions do they have to face from the DEQ? A cessation of their activities? A disabling fine? Criminal charges? No, none of the above. Instead, they’ve been ordered to “submit a written plan.” That’ll teach ’em a lesson!)
But as bad as that news is, it gets worse. They’ve also recently gone and angered Larry Bell. Yes, that Larry Bell, the guy who brews what might be the best beer on the planet: Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale. What’s got Bell upset? Well, it seems that Enbridge, in complying with the EPA’s recent order to continue cleaning up the Kalamazoo River, has embarked upon a work plan without bothering to notify or consult any of the locals, including the local government, about it (sounds familiar, right?). And that has Larry Bell and other residents and business owners concerned about the effects that work might have on their business and their lives.
It’s just one thing after another, with no apparent end in sight. And it’s one thing to mess with landowners, to flout local authority, to disregard regulations, and to dissemble and make hollow pronouncements to the public. But to go and mess with our beer? That’s just cruel.
Yesterday, we experienced the near impossible. No, Enbridge did not announce that they’re going to remove the old Line 6B and issue an apology to all landowners for behaving callously toward them. That, too, would be a miracle. No, instead, after numerous conversations with construction workers this week– workers from Tennessee and Texas and Oklahoma and Mississippi– we finally met someone from Michigan! And from the immediate area, no less. We’re not sure if this one guy gets 1,000 jobs of if the other 999 local workers Enbridge likes to talk about are being hidden somewhere else, but it was nice to see a fellow Michigander in a hard hat and safety vest for a change.
There’s some other news to report as well. We’re happy to see that citizens in Indiana are keeping up the pressure, calling for more state regulatory oversight of Enbridge and other pipeline companies. Believe it or not, they might have a weaker regulatory system than Michigan. We’re also glad to see that they’re working with our awesome friends from the Pipeline Safety Trust.
Lastly, it now looks like Enbridge is going to buy– and remove– Ceresco Dam. Evidently, the DNR thinks removing the dam is a good idea and, as this is something we know nothing about, we don’t have an opinion about it. But we do find it bothersome and rather ominous that Enbridge is going to buy up even more of the Kalamazoo River– it’s yet another example, in addition to the one we mentioned yesterday, of how they are remaking the state of Michigan in their own image. Local resident Greg Lawcock agrees: “”That’s too much control for one company if you ask me,” said Lawcock.
Details have yet to be released on Enbridge plans to acquire the sun and the moon.
Yesterday, we launched a new series devoted to the question, why can’t Enbridge do better? We’re trying to figure out what causes them to continue to alienate landowners and to fail to live up to the values they profess publicly. The reason we’re thinking about this is that construction crews returned to our property this week to tear it up again. And no one let us know anything about it– and in our view, that’s just downright unneighborly. So we’ve been exploring some possible theories that might account for Enbridge’s apparent inability to do things right. In our last post, we advanced 5 possible theories, some of which we dismissed and others which seem to us to have some merit. Today, we’ll consider a few more possibilities:
Theory #6: It’s hard for old dogs to learn new tricks. Or perhaps a better way to put this is to say that you can’t conduct business in the twenty-first century as if it’s still the twentieth. Yet that’s exactly what Enbridge is attempting to do. And it’s not just that they seemed to think, at the start of this project, that they would come down here to Michigan and find things just as they were in 1969 when all of their easements were first acquired: a bunch of farmland, where dwellings are acres distant from their pipeline. It seems not to have occurred to Enbridge that things might have changed in 50 years, that population density would have increased, that matters are different when construction crews will be right next to houses, not way back in yonder pasture with the wheat and the cattle. It’s not just that. The metaphorical landscape has changed as well. People today, we think, are generally more skeptical toward the activities and motivations of large corporations, slightly less trusting of big business (surely we don’t need to rehearse the litany of early-21st-century reasons why, right?). Such wariness is especially pronounced when it comes to energy companies. There exists today far more awareness of and concern about our dependence on petroleum and fossil fuels, concern for the environment, worries about climate change. On top of all this, add the internet and social media, which facilitate instant communication among strangers and the spread of information in ways unimaginable 20, 30, 40 or more years ago. People in similar situations can talk via email; they can Skype; they can find each other on Facebook. They can start blogs. Enbridge’s treatment of landowners, their slow-footed, ham-handed, clumsy responses to citizen organizing, demonstrates pretty clearly that they have only a dim understanding of any of this.
So we think this is a pretty compelling theory; it accounts for a great deal. On the other hand, it has its flaws. After all, any decent dog trainer will tell you that it is not at all hard to teach old dogs new tricks. Dogs stay smart and curious and adaptable well into their twilight years. Enbridge appears to be neither smart nor adaptable. Enbridge is a bad dog. For instance, Enbridge has had more than a year, mountains of bad press, countless expressions of landowner dissatisfaction (lots of it posted here), condemnation suits, lawsuits, countless tense conversations and contentious negotiations to learn from. Yet they appear to have learned nothing. We’re still, a year later, hearing the same old stories about rude or abusive land agents, misinformation, poor communication between Enbridge and its agents and agents and landowners. A very large body of evidence suggests that they haven’t learned anything, that they have changed very little. What is to explain that?
Theory #7: They’re accustomed to getting their way. One theory that could explain their failure to get their act together and try a different approach on phase two than the one that earned them nothing but heartburn on phase one is this: like a spoiled child, they’re accustomed to getting their way. And when they don’t get their way (or when someone questions whether they should get their way), it’s everybody else’s fault but their own. This one is surely true. It’s surely more or less true of their entire industry for the last 50 or more years. They are weakly regulated, largely get to write their own rules, have cozy relationships with regulators. They have power and money and influence. They’re the biggest kid on the block. And when you’re the biggest, you can more or less do as you please. Personally, we’ve never found ourselves in this situation (growing up, we mostly had older siblings!). But we can imagine that one gets used to this sort of thing. One starts to think it’s entirely natural, that it’s just the way of the world.
And why wouldn’t they? They’ve certainly gotten their way here in Michigan. Hardly a single elected official ever said so much as “boo” during the MPSC approval process or before. And Enbridge didn’t just sail through the MPSC, they almost completely refashioned it in their own image, ensuring that its regulatory authority is crippled for themselves and their industry counterparts for many years to come. When you can do that, when you can bend an entire state to your will, why wouldn’t you consider, say, a small local township or a few unhappy landowners as mere trifles, as things hardly to be bothered with at all?
Theory #8: It’s the culture, stupid. Combine these last three theories and what they add up to is a longstanding, deeply embedded set of cultural practices and attitudes– of the sort that we described quite a while ago when thinking over the remarks of Enbridge’s former CEO Patrick Daniel. There, we described a corporate culture that is insular, clannish, defensive, given to hollow sloganeering in place of principled conduct, and seemingly incapable of honest self-reflection. And maybe this shouldn’t be so surprising. After all, culture is a hard thing to change. The attitudes and practices of one’s culture run so deep as to be invisible to those inside of it. To those within the culture, the things they do or believe don’t seem to be derived from culture at all; they don’t seem like things that even can be changed, much less things that ought to be changed. Rather, they just are. They’re like air and water or the blood coursing through your veins.
This is why, when it comes to corporate cultures, it’s so important for someone– whether that be legislators, local, state, and federal regulatory agencies, customers, citizen watchdog groups, or journalists– to provide those inside with an outside view. It’s why critics (to name just one more group that can provide valuable perspective) are so very important. It’s why, as we’ve said before, what we do here at the Line 6B Citizens’ Blog is actually a service to Enbridge. We can help them. We are trying to help them. If only they were willing to listen.
In an earlier post, we (longwindedly) pondered the question: why can’t Enbridge do better when it comes to cultivating amicable, productive relationships with landowners? Over and over they fail to do the simplest of things that would go a long way to fostering such positive relationships and ending what must seem to them like a never-ending stream of criticism. In this post, we’ll consider several possible answers to that question.
Theory #1: It’s not them, it’s us. Unlike Enbridge, we’re capable of self-reflection, of taking a sober look at ourselves and taking seriously the possibility that we are the problem. So maybe it’s us. After all, this blog is primarily devoted to criticism. From Enbridge’s point of view, we must surely seem like people who just like to complain, who are always adversarial, who will just never be happy (as Tom Hodge once said of displeased landowners generally). So why should they bother cultivating good relations with us? We’re a lost cause. If we’re not notified of construction activity, if our agents can’t give us any clear information, if Enbridge reps– Doug Aller, Jason Manshum, Mark Curwin– ignore our emails, well, we’ve got it coming. That’s what we get for all of the negative things we’ve said here, in newspapers, and elsewhere.
It’s a plausible theory. But there are a few reasons it doesn’t quite hold up. For one thing, it’s not just us. We’ve heard (and told) far too many stories of Enbridge’s disregard for other landowners, landowners who have never uttered a peep of criticism publicly against them. For another thing, in our correspondence with Enbridge reps we have always been unfailingly polite and respectful (we have every single email; we can show them to you!). In our correspondence with Enbridge, we have never given anyone any cause to think that we’re not communicating with them openly and honestly (as they say they communicate). And frankly, the same goes for this blog. Sure, we’re critical. But we don’t engage in personal attacks. We’re not inflammatory or ad hominem. We try very hard to stick to the facts. If there’s something here that is untrue, all Enbridge needs to do is say so and we will correct it. But they have never once done so. Finally, there’s one more reason why we think the “it’s us” theory doesn’t hold up: the fact of the matter is, like it or not, we are STILL Enbridge stakeholders. Their pipe runs through our property. We’re in this together no matter how little either of us likes it. They’re stuck with us just as we’re stuck with them. And we’ve never seen the part where their treatment of landowners or their corporate values exclude people who utter criticisms of them in public. If that’s the case, if their practice is really to “Take the time to understand the perspective of others… until they criticize you,” or if their actual policy is “Treat everyone with unfailing dignity… unless they say things you don’t like,” then maybe they need to revise their corporate values statement. But until they do, we’ll hold them to the original.
Theory #2: They’re evil. If it’s not us, it really must be them. So maybe they’re just bad, rotten to the core. Evil. One of the first things Enbridge Vice President Mark Sitek said to us when we spoke on the phone is, “we’re not evil.” And we quickly pointed out that we have never said any such thing about Enbridge. And in fact, after all this time, we would still never say that. So let’s be very clear: we do not think that Enbridge is “evil.” Frankly, we don’t really even know what such a statement could possibly mean in the first place.
Theory #3: Ineptitude. So if Enbridge isn’t evil, what are they? Well, one theory might hold that they’re simply inept. They’re incompetent. They don’t know what they’re doing and they lack the skills to do it. This is a tempting theory, especially given the fact that they so consistently fail to do things right. But there are several reasons we think this theory doesn’t hold. For one thing, they are a very large, very successful corporation. They make hundreds of millions of dollars a year. They operate and maintain a complicated and sophisticated network of pipelines and manage large, varied demands from diverse customers, partners, and stakeholders. You can’t do that if you’re inept (unless you win the lottery or something).
So maybe they’re only inept at dealing with landowners. This one we’re willing to consider. But Jason Manshum (and I’m sure others) assures us that the “vast majority” of landowners over the past 60 years are quite happy with Enbridge. And even though, judging from the way he’s dodging our questions about this point, he can’t provide any real evidence for that claim, let’s take him at his word. Let’s assume that they DO know how to deal successfully with landowners. Let’s assume it’s NOT ineptitude. The question still remains, why don’t they do what they know how to do?
Theory #4: They just don’t care. This one is tricky. It’s tricky because they talk a lot about how much they care. There are those corporate values, for example. There are all of those fancy and expensive ads (and more and more and more) designed to convince everyone of just how much they care. There are all of the statements that they make in public. But here’s an instance where it’s a little harder to take them at their word. After all, it’s easy to say you care. It’s easy to say you want to be a good neighbor. It’s a little harder to actually be a good neighbor. But not that much harder. Which is precisely the point. How difficult is it, really, to make sure that land agents know when and where construction crews are going to go digging up buried pipe so that they can notify the affected landowners? It can’t really be very hard. So why not just do it? Maybe because it doesn’t occur to you to do it. And the reason it doesn’t occur to you is because you don’t really care. Considering how a landowner who thought construction was over might feel if construction were to re-commence takes a little bit of empathy. Caring people empathize. So maybe this one’s true; Enbridge just doesn’t care– even though they want you to think they care.
Theory #5: It’s not them, it’s their contractors. The fair-minded part of us still wants to hold the tiniest bit of hope that theory #4 is wrong and that when Enbridge reps say they care, they actually mean it. So maybe the problem isn’t with them, but with their contractors. After all, most of what goes on on the ground, most of the people that landowners deal with aren’t actually Enbridge employees. They’re contractors. The construction crews are with an outfit called Precision Pipeline. The right of way agents (or so we understand; this whole system is rather murky) are apparently with a company called Salem Professional Services. And judging from what we heard at the Michigan International Right of Way Association, Salem may not have the best reputation in the industry. Our experience with their agents (though not all of them) seems to support the conclusion that Salem has some problems with quality or experience or professionalism or something. So perhaps there’s some merit to this theory. But we can’t say the same, not in our experience, with Precision. Not being pipeline engineers or welders, we’re hardly in a position to judge the quality of their work– although they appear to be experienced and efficient– but we can certainly say from dozens of conversations and encounters that they hire good people who take pride in their work. We have very much enjoyed meeting and talking with Precision’s construction workers. With very few exceptions they’ve been friendly, respectful, pleasant, serious and happy to engage and answer questions. Our only regret is that more of them haven’t been from Michigan.
So ultimately, we’re disinclined to pin it on the contractors, even though we have our concerns about Salem. After all, it shouldn’t be that hard for Enbridge to demand that its contractors adhere to its values and standards– regardless of the contracting company’s standards. And we know that Enbridge has its own employees in the area of land rights; we visited them. Those are the people, we assume, who should be training and monitoring the contract workers. They are the people, not Salem and its employees, who should be ultimately responsible for the failures and incompetencies and inaccuracies emanating from the land agents. So those are the people– or so our experience suggests– who seem not to really care, lending further credence to theory #4. After all, if the people in the corporate office of land rights aren’t willing to listen to and engage seriously and empathetically with landowners, how can the non-Enbridge employees they oversee be expected to do so?
But we still don’t think “they don’t care” is quite adequate. However, it appears that the answer to this simple question is so complicated that it requires a series of posts to do it justice. In fact, we’ve got a handful of more theories to consider. We’ll take those up in later installments. Please come back.
This week, while we’ve watched Enbridge’s construction crews return to our property, which is now once again torn up, strewn with long sections of pipe and heavy equipment and also, thanks to the weather, a big, sloggy, muddy mess, we’ve been stewing a little. And we’ve been ruminating on one basic question: why can’t Enbridge do better?
In this case, we’re not even talking about their operations. We’re not making a big deal out of the fact that some 400 feet of pipe they pulled beneath a road and across a couple of our neighbors’ properties is damaged and has to be replaced. We are not suggesting that this is a sign of carelessness or shoddy work or ineptitude or any such thing. We are not pipeline construction experts. We assume that these sorts of things happen from time to time; laying hundreds of miles of pipe is a complicated, sophisticated process about which we do not pretend to know very much (other than what we’ve learned over these several months). And in fact, we’re sure it’s better that they’re fixing the problems their tests discovered rather than finding ways to dismiss indications of problems (as was the case in Marshall in 2010). So, we have no real quarrel with the fact that they’ve had to re-commence construction in our neighborhood and on our property– even though we are tired tired tired, oh-so-tired of dealing with the noise, the mess, the intrusions, and the disruptions.
No, the problem– and this has ALWAYS been the problem– is with how they’ve gone about, with the thoughtless disregard Enbridge has shown toward us (in this case) and toward so many landowners over the course of this project. And for reasons we still cannot fathom– especially given all that has happened over the past year, all of the complaints and bad press and contention and legal-wrangling– Enbridge simply can’t seem to rectify this problem. They simply can’t seem to do any better. Why?
Let’s back up and review what’s transpired this week as we consider this most difficult of questions:
Some time a few weeks ago, our neighbors immediately adjacent to us were notified by an Enbridge rep that hydrotesting was about to take place on the newly installed line. We were not notified. Presumably, there is some reason for this– proximity, perhaps?– so we didn’t think a great deal of it. But then last weekend, construction crews arrived on that same neighbor’s property and began digging, commencing the process they are now in the middle of, replacing that stretch of pipe.
Naturally, we wondered if any construction would be taking place on our property. We also had some lingering questions about restoration, questions we’ve been trying to get answered since February. So we figured it was as good a time as any to give an agent a call (that is, the agent whose name we were given by our former agent who has since departed). Now, this particular agent happens to be, at least in our limited dealings with him, a very nice guy, polite, respectful, all of that. But he’s clearly overworked; he told us he was working on more than one Enbridge project at present. And not only is he overworked, he has obviously not been given any information about much of anything by anyone in any kind of supervisory position. (Who’s his boss? Doug Aller? Micah Harris? We’re not sure, but whoever it is, that person would appear to be doing a very, very poor job.) The reason we say he has not been given any information is because he told us, flatly and forthrightly (which was rather refreshing, to be honest) that he did not know anything about any of the questions we were asking– about restoration, including some things we’ve been told by Mark Curwin and Tom Hodge, about the recent tests, about the construction currently taking place, about the prospects for work taking place on our property. Nothing. He just didn’t know.
Now, it’s worth pausing here for one second to pose the obvious question: what is the point of giving landowners the contact information of people who are completely unable to answer any of their questions? What is a landowner supposed to do in such a situation? We’ll return to this question.
That call was early Monday morning. Then, surprisingly, not 10 minutes after hanging up the phone, we look out the back door and see surveyors on our property. So we went out to talk with them. The surveyor, unlike the land agent, did seem to know some things. He seemed to have some idea of how the pipe was damaged and the steps that crews were preparing to take in order to fix it. He told us that our property was going to be used to stage some pipe. What he did not say– and we don’t blame him for this; he’s just a surveyor– was that bulldozers were about to arrive to start pushing aside all of our topsoil and that other heavy equipment and a fleet of pickup trucks and all manner of noise and mess and mayhem would ensue. But over the next few days, that is exactly what has happened. We posted pictures of the scene yesterday.
Now, again, all of this mess is terribly unfortunate and frustrating. But ordinarily, we’d be disinclined to complain about it. We know it’s just the deal. Enbridge has an easement on our property. They need to install their pipe. They have to fix it when they find problems. We get all that. The problem, however, is this: no one from Enbridge ever told us beforehand that this was going to happen. We received NO notification. Not a friendly knock on the door, not a phone call, not even an email. Nothing. One day we’re thinking about planting some trees; the next day bulldozers are back. Just like that.
So here’s a second question: does that sound neighborly to you? Do good neighbors just show up unannounced, without so much as a courtesy call to let you know they’ll be dropping by? And when you later tell them that you don’t appreciate them just dropping by without the slightest warning– as I did in an email to Mark Curwin and Tom Hodge– would a good neighbor just ignore you?
Which brings us back to our original question: why can’t Enbridge do better? What is it that prevents them from taking even the simplest steps to cultivate good relations with landowners? What keeps them from doing the things they say they’ll do? from living up to the values they profess and the principles they say guide their conduct? from conducting themselves in such a manner that would prevent us from having an endless amount of material to write about? Why do they seem to be completely incapable of getting it right?
Well, we started this post wanting to answer that question. But the posing of the question has gotten much longer than we anticipated. So we’ll explore some answers in a separate posting. Stay tuned.
What a week! After a few weeks of relative silence (and almost complete silence from us– we’re sorry!), things Enbridge-related exploded this week.
It started Monday morning with a harmless phone call to an Enbridge land agent to try and get some simple information about restoration. But he didn’t know anything. Nothing. At all.
But no sooner did we hang up the phone than we saw some workers pounding stakes into the ground on our property. Minutes after that, bulldozers arrived and started pushing dirt around. Now hundreds of feet of pipe are back on our property, causing us to have traumatic flashbacks to last November. Here is what our property looked like last week:
And here is what it looks like this morning (we’ll bring you the full story of all of this in a subsequent post):
The same day, the second of two reports on Line 6B by Keith Matheny appeared in the Detroit Free Press. It’s fine work, though as usual, the disingenuous remarks of Enbridge spokesperson Jason Manshum raised our hackles. So we wrote to him for clarification. It’s been two days now and he has not responded. Evidently, Manshum is not obligated to adhere to Enbridge’s stated corporate values of “maintain[ing] truth in all interactions,” “tak[ing] the time to understand the perspective of others,” and “treat[ing] everyone with unfailing dignity.”
Also on the same day, an intrepid young activist decided to climb inside a section of Line 6B to protest the transportation of dilbit from Canada to the U.S. Reports say he is healthy and safe.
We will add one tiny bit of our own commentary here. The industry response to the NAS study included this little gem by Shawn Howard, a spokesman for TransCanada:
“At some point, the professional opposition that has used Keystone XL and the oil sands industry as a symbol for their fundraising and advocacy campaigns will need to accept the fact that this product has been moving through the U.S. for decades, that oil is oil and that pipelines remain the safest way to move oil to refineries where it is needed,” TransCanada Corp. spokesman Shawn Howard said via email.
“As a responsible, publicly traded company, TransCanada has an obligation to provide accurate and factual information about our projects to the public and our shareholders — and we hope that the professional opposition to this project will start to do the same.”
Taking a page from the Pat Daniel playbook, Howard refers to a diverse group of citizens with varied and mostly reasonable concerns as “professional opposition.” And he does it twice, in a willfully dishonest attempt to dismiss critics of his industry. What rankles us so much about this– and we’ve seen a similar tactic employed by Enbridge; not just Daniel, but also Larry Springer and even, we’re sorry to say, Tom Hodge— is not just that it is reductive, misleading, and an affront to the truth. It’s also that Howard does it in the very same sentence in which he’s trying to convince us that TransCanada is “responsible” and devoted to “accurate and factual information”! It’s exactly like Enbridge telling us they’re committed to being good neighbors while in the midst of behaving in an unneighborly manner.
But that’s not all this week has had in store for us. Yesterday, the president gave a much anticipated climate speech. Many groups are heartened by his remark that the KXL project should go forward “only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.” For ourselves, we don’t think that’s a terribly unequivocal statement. But we’re trying to be hopeful.
As we reported yesterday, construction crews have returned to our property, which evidently they need to stage some pipe to replace a damaged section of pipe on properties adjacent to ours. No one from Enbridge bothered to let us know that they’d be here tearing up the land they carefully restored about a month ago. In fact, when we asked our new land agent yesterday, right before crews arrived, if any work would be taking place on our property, he didn’t know. You see, Enbridge (as we’ve long known) doesn’t even communicate well with its own people.
All of this, of course, is dismaying– and for lots of reasons. In addition to the complete lack of regard for landowners like us, here’s cause for dismay: you might recall the lovely surprise we discovered a couple of months ago once all the equipment left our property. Some irises miraculously survived the ordeal. Here they are just last month, growing and thriving:
And here they are this morning–er, well, um, you can’t see them because they are now crushed underneath that large piece of equipment.
You might also recall all the new topsoil they brought in for us after spoiling ours by carelessly dumping subsoil on top of it. This morning, we’ve been watching them bulldoze it all up. Like this:
Oh, and that piece of pipe there? Evidently, that’s the damaged section they removed. We’re not sure why it was necessary to set it on our land.
As we mentioned earlier today, the Freep’s excellent new environmental reporter Keith Matheny has a second article about Line 6B in today’s paper. We think he is doing fine work (the first story is here) and not just because he spoke with us and our friend David Gallagher (happy birthday, David!). But the one thing that stuck in our craw a little reading this story was something Jason Manshum, with his never-ending cache of hollow and misleading quotations, said:
Enbridge spokesman Jason Manshum said the company has worked with thousands of landowners along its pipelines over more than 60 years and “the vast majority of landowners we’ve worked with are pleased with negotiations.”
Now, we’ve heard this line from Enbridge reps in the past, more than once. And we’ve also commented upon it. But this time, we decided not to let it pass. And so, we dashed off the following email to Jason Manshum:
Dear Jason Manshum-
I’m hoping you can answer a few questions for me. This morning I read your comments in the Detroit Free Press and was struck by your statement that “the vast majority of landowners we’ve worked with are pleased with negotiations.” I have read similar statements from you and other Enbridge representatives in the past. As a Line 6B landowner myself, this got me to wondering:
The article seems to suggest that this statement has to do with all landowners Enbridge has dealt with “over more 60 years.” But I’m not sure how that is relevant to this project. So, would you say that the “vast majority of landowners” on the replacement of Line 6B have been “pleased with negotiations”?
If so, I’d be interested to know the basis upon which you make that determination. Does “pleased” mean that you didn’t have to take them to court? Would those whom you count as “pleased” include, for example, people who have never expressed any dissatisfaction publicly but who nevertheless were not at all happy with their negotiations? Would it include people for whom negotiations and/or compensation went smoothly, but who did not, say, trust their land agent or Enbridge generally? How many landowners on Line 6B have you actually spoken with? How have you gathered data otherwise? I’m just trying to understand what evidence you are drawing upon to support your assertion.
Assuming that you are right and it is true that the vast majority of landowners have been pleased with negotiations, what would you say is an acceptable level of displeasure for Enbridge? Ten percent of landowners? Twenty? Thirty?
Relatedly, how many landowners would you say need to be displeased in order for Enbridge to consider and/or acknowledge that they might be responsible for landowner dissatisfaction (as opposed to just assuming that unhappy landowners are just people who will never be pleased with anything)?
I don’t mean these to be rhetorical questions. Any help you can provide would be very much appreciated. I look forward to your reply.
Best,
Jeff Insko
Groveland Township, MI
We will of course provide you with a full report of Manshum’s reply if and when we receive it.
We apologize for our recent absence– but assure you we are still on the case! We’ll explain why we’ve been away later and we’ll also try to play some catch up. In the meantime, you might check out the latest from the Freep (we’re in there along with our friend David Gallagher). Reporter Keith Metheny is doing some fine work.
Oh, and what makes the appearance of the article especially timely? It appears on the very day when bulldozers showed up– completely unannounced– to our property. They’re out there right now here’s photographic evidence!). We’ll tell you that story soon also!
This just in: the government of British Columbia has rejected Enbridge’s proposal for its Northern Gateway project. The bottom line, according to the B.C. Environment Minister: “Our questions were not satisfactorily answered [by Enbridge] during these hearings.”
One can’t help but wonder how the Line 6B “replacement” project might have been different had Enbridge been subjected to the same level of scrutiny here in the U.S. and Michigan.
Honestly, we thought, after all this time, that things might change. We thought– despite the available evidence— that Enbridge might learn from its mistakes. We thought–we hoped– that landowners along phase two might benefit from the experiences of and all the noise made by those of us on phase one. We thought, at the very least, that Enbridge– so very thin-skinned and so desperately image-conscious— might want the tales of bad behavior and the criticisms to just stop and, therefore, that they would begin to conduct themselves in ways that comport with all of their good neighbor rhetoric.
Looks like we were wrong. Over the next several days, we’ll bring you three ugly stories of landowners along phase two, stories that are no less troubling because they sound so terribly familiar to those of us on phase one. Not surprisingly, these stories, like countless others we’ve heard over the past year, mainly have to do with the unreliability, untrustworthiness, and unprofessionalism of Enbridge’s right of way agents. This has long been a problem, perhaps the primary source of landowner unhappiness and dissatisfaction. There’s just no getting around the fact that Enbridge’s land agents (not every single one, of course; there are surely some good ones; as we’ve noted in the past, during construction and restoration, ours was very responsive) have done the company and landowners a terrible disservice. Their actions– misinforming, failing to return phone calls, communicating sporadically or poorly, dismissing legitimate concerns, using the threat of condemnation as a cudgel to beat landowners into submission (even before, as in our case, the state had granted Enbridge that right), treating people disrespectfully– have gone a long way toward breeding an atmosphere of mistrust and contention between Enbridge and landowners along the pipeline route. It makes one pine for the fictional land agent conjured up by Enbridge’s public relations machine.
But while a lot of blame for this breakdown of relations can be laid at the feet of Enbridge’s land agents (we’re not letting them off the hook), it’s Enbridge that bears ultimate responsibility for all of this (and this is why, we repeat once more, we have NEVER ONCE called out a land agent by name– though we could; nor have we told even the tiniest fraction of stories about their bad behavior that we’ve heard over the past year or so). Most of those agents aren’t really even Enbridge employees; they’re contractors– (which is an interesting story in itself; in fact, we know the land agent company that has contracted with Enbridge and have been looking into this; we hope to post more about it at a later date). When we, along with Kim Savage, told some of these stories of land agent behavior to the members of the Michigan chapter of the International Right of Way Association a few months back, they were shocked and appalled, nearly incredulous.
So why does this kind of land agent conduct seem to be continuing even today? After all, there are Enbridge employees who are (ostensibly) in charge of supervising those land agents (or so we think). And those supervisors surely know about the kinds of behavior we’re talking about. They have surely heard these stories by now, if not from this blog, then from plenty of other sources. Yet they appear not to want to hear it or do anything about it. At least that’s true in our experience: Mike Bradburn, Doug Aller, Mike Harris– all of them brushed us off, ignored our attempts to contact them; none have been willing to actually listen, take seriously, and respond forthrightly to landowner concerns about the people they supervise, then take action to correct these persistent problems, problems that have done nothing but alienate people, cause needless conflict and strife, and delay the timely completion of the project.
What’s more, all of this has led to a very strange situation in which, when things get particularly bad (or go public), people like Mark Curwin and Tom Hodge– people who have other jobs to do– have to step in and try to do the job that land agents should be doing: cultivating amicable relationships with landowners, addressing reasonable concerns, solving problems created by right of way agents. We saw this first hand, for instance, the night we met Tony Amico at a Brandon Township meeting. Honestly, if we were Curwin and Hodge, we’d be furious about this state of affairs; we’d be cracking heads over in the office responsible for land acquisitions and rights-of-way (and for all we know, maybe they have done just that; we haven’t got a clue what goes on behind the scenes).
But we have our doubts. One of the things we’ve learned after all these months, and we’ve discussed this before, is that Enbridge isn’t that good at being introspective, at taking a cold, sober look at their own conduct (and this despite their own stated corporate values), at being self-critical and making appropriate adjustments. That’s because to them, all of these are just p.r. problems, not systemic ones. So instead of altering their conduct, they tend to hunker down and get defensive. Or they just buy a new ad, send out a glossy new brochure, find someone compliant to help them polish their image. Or they deploy Jason Manshum or another one of their seemingly endless horde of spinmeisters.
The one thing they appear not to do– or so the stories we’ll bring you over the next few days– is the one thing that would actually solve all of these problems: treat landowners with respect and consideration; just stop giving us stories to tell.
Early last week, we kicked off our latest series— on our experience with IJNR Kalamazoo River Institute— by ruminating on the strange current state of Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River. Yes, both are lovely and seemingly very clean. Objectively speaking, it’s hard to say that Enbridge did not clean them up well (you can do a lot with a billion dollars)– although there’s much more to be done (so says the EPA). Of course, in our view, the cleanup effort is not really cause for any great celebration or any reason to go heaping praise on Enbridge. After all, if you break something that doesn’t belong to you, you should be obligated to fix it– and not congratulated for doing so.
But as we said in that previous post, what was most striking to us about the creek and the river was, first, the way in which the history of the spill appears to have been erased. The truth about what happened there in 2010 is evident only through a series of barely perceptible signs, all but unreadable to the average visitor. This, in our view, is a travesty. If there’s a sign commemorating the site where the Jeffery family once lived, there also ought to be a sign explaining why they don’t live there anymore. There ought to be signs and plaques up and down the river telling future generations of river-goers exactly what happened to the ecosystem and to the lives of all those decent, ordinary people– the Deb Millers and Susan Connollys. The future citizens of Michigan ought to know about the mess. They ought to know the truth– that people’s lives were disrupted, in some cases ruined, that their health was affected, that flora and fauna were destroyed– not just the clean up, and the greenwashing.
The other thing that struck us about the current state of the river and the creek– and it’s related to the first– is their “hyperreal” quality. The pre-2010 river and creek are gone and a new river and a new creek have taken their place, rivers and creeks re-made and, to a large extent, operated by Enbridge. Public, natural resource have become (to a degree) semi-private, artificial creations. And we just find that a little, um, creepy.
So why are we rehashing this today, having just written about it a few days ago? Well, because no sooner had we posted about this than we stumbled upon a perfect illustration of our point. Let us introduce you to David Jephson:
Jephson is the deputy fire chief in Terrace, British Columbia up in Canada– which is one of the (many) places where Enbridge has run into a bit of opposition with their massive Northern Gateway project (sort of Canada’s Keystone XL). Earlier this month, Enbridge invited a number of B.C. officials to a tour of Marshall and the Kalamazoo River so that the officials could observe first-hand just how marvelous and squeaky-clean it is now. This, evidently, is Enbridge’s way of persuading Canadian officials of the company’s all-around wonderfulness and putting to rest any apprehensions the officials might have about a Marshall-like spill in northern B.C.
Well, deputy chief Jephson was mighty impressed, as he told the CBC in a radio interview (he has also spoken to a local newspaper). For one thing, Jephson seems to think it’s meaningful– evidence that it was no big deal?– that some random people the delegation met in Detroit didn’t know very much about the spill. But the most extraordinary thing Jephson says is “you wouldn’t know there was a spill there unless you were told”– as if the erasure of the history of that spill and the devastation it caused were a good thing, as if the view and experience, and history of the river and the spill they were getting from Enbridge were accurate, transparent, and honest– rather than carefully orchestrated. The level of gullibility on display by Jephson is truly extraordinary. In fact, Enbridge is so pleased with the things Jephson has been saying since the tour that they have posted a transcript of the radio interview on their website and appear to have adopted him as their new mascot– they’ve replaced poor Michael Milan!
But of course, few people really know what the tour Enbridge took Jephson on was really like, even though Jephson says it was a “fact finding trip”– and nobody other than Jephson appears to be talking We have no idea who the officials on the tour met and spoke with– and we’ve been trying to find out. As is typically the case with Enbridge, the tour, the information supplied by the tour, and information about the tour, all seem to have been very carefully controlled, even a little secretive. But you can be sure that the people on the tour certainly didn’t speak with any Enbridge critics. Nor do they appear to have met or spoken with any of the important scientists or organizations working on restoration (this according to our friend Beth Wallace, who also tried to find out). But you can bet that they talked to plenty of Enbridge’s deep pool of public relations message massagers.
This morning, we’re a little irritated. Remember that story about those disturbing piles of petroleum coke, a byproduct of the dilbit refining process, that we reported on a couple of months ago? Well, the New York Timesran a piece by reporter Ian Austen on the story just this week– and it’s getting a lot of play. It’s all over the web and social media. And of course, we think this is a very good thing. In fact, the more attention this gets the better. The last thing we want is to have that gunk spilling into the Detroit River. And a national discussion about the costs of using this filthy byproduct– what one expert in the article calls “the dirtiest residue from the dirtiest oil on earth”– is long overdue. So, three cheers for Ian Austen and the New York Times. Well, make that two cheers.
Why are we irritated? Two reasons:
First, because the main reason the story seems to be getting so much play– and perhaps a major reason why the Times picked it up in the first place (two months after the story broke here in Michigan)– is because the petcoke can now be linked to the Koch brothers, those wealthy conservative super-villains (to people on the left). Linking this story to the Kochs makes for some good outrage. Here’s how Austen frames his piece:
Detroit’s ever-growing black mountain is the unloved, unwanted and long overlooked byproduct of Canada’s oil sands boom.
And no one knows quite what to do about it, except Koch Carbon, which owns it.
The company is controlled by Charles and David Koch, wealthy industrialists who back a number of conservative and libertarian causes including activist groups that challenge the science behind climate change. The company sells the high-sulfur, high-carbon waste, usually overseas, where it is burned as fuel.
The coke comes from a refinery alongside the river owned by Marathon Petroleum, which has been there since 1930. But it began refining exports from the Canadian oil sands — and producing the waste that is sold to Koch — only in November.
But in our view, it really shouldn’t matter; it shouldn’t make it any more concerning to know that the Koch brothers own that stuff. We’d find those piles of black dust on the shores of the river alarming if they were owned by our own brothers. The fact that this story has to be shoe-horned into a familiar ideological narrative in order to get it on the national radar is, we confess, bothersome– irritating.
The second reason we’re irritated is because the Times piece never says how that stuff– or the stuff that makes that stuff– got to Detroit in the first place. Instead, it says only this:
An initial refining process known as coking, which releases the oil from the tarlike bitumen in the oil sands, also leaves the petroleum coke, of which Canada has 79.8 million tons stockpiled. Some is dumped in open-pit oil sands mines and tailing ponds in Alberta. Much is just piled up there.
Detroit’s pile will not be the only one. Canada’s efforts to sell more products derived from oil sands to the United States, which include transporting it through the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, have pulled more coking south to American refineries, creating more waste product here.
Marathon Petroleum’s plant in Detroit processes 28,000 barrels a day of the oil sands bitumen.
See what happened there? The Times went and pulled a Stabenow on its readers (if we may coin a phrase). That is, just at the moment when one might expect an explanation of how Enbridge’s Line 6B– the line that ruptured in Marshall in the worst inland oil spill in U.S. history– feeds diluted bitumen to that Marathon refinery, at that very moment, instead of rehearsing a bit of Enbridge history in Michigan and beyond, Austen turns to a discussion of… Keystone XL! Never mind that Enbridge, as we’ve said before, is quietly building its own KXL. Never mind that Marathon’s plant is about to increase production by more than half because of the” replacement” of Line 6B (thereby producing even more petroleum coke). To the Times, it’s as if Enbridge and Line 6B don’t exist. Once again, as with Senator Stabenow’s staff, Keystone appears to be the only game in town.
A couple of weeks back, we promised the launch of a new series about our experience tagging along with a pack of journalists brought together by the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources. You really should check that link; we’re quite smitten with the work the Institute does. in our view, their model should be replicated across the country and we’re totally impressed with Dave Spratt and Adam Hinterthuer. Today, we’re happy to bring you the first installment on our day with them at their Kalamazoo River Institute.
Dave and Adam invited us, along with phase two landowner David Gallagher (we’ll more on his story in another installment), to speak to the journos about our experience with the Line 6B replacement. And one of the journalists, Mark Brooks from Earthgauge Radio up in Canada has posted audio of much of our remarks. Even better, Dave and Adam were gracious enough to let us tag along with the group for most of the day. Since this was, believe it or not, our first-ever trip to Marshall and the site of the “dilbit disaster,” we were lucky to have the NWF’s Beth Wallace as an escort. On our way to the first stop of the day– the spot where Talmadge Creek meets the Kalamazoo River– we got to see the creek for the very first time. Here it is, quite lovely:
This shot is about a mile downcreek from the rupture. The creek carried the oil, which spilled over the banks more than 10 feet on either side, another half mile to the Kalamazoo River, which is where we met up with the journalists for a canoe trip a couple of miles in length all the way to Ceresco Dam, a key cleanup site following the spill and still today. At the landing where we launched is a new park, created by Enbridge. It’s very nice, which seems like a wonderful thing until you learn that on the day of the spill, the site was home to the Jeffery family, who had been there for 53 years. The sign, which cheerfully notes that “in 2011, the property was converted into a public park to enhance the community’s experience on the Kalamazoo River,” is a disturbing example of historical erasure: it makes no mention of WHY the property “was converted” into a public park– because Enbridge’s decaying pipeline ruptured, dumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of diluted bitumen into the river and ruining the Jefferys’ property.
A bridge runs over the river at the park. If you look closely here, you can see a black line about a foot above the water; that line was left there by the oil, showing just how high the river was on the day of the spill. The line also serves, or se we thought, as another barely perceptible reminder of what happened in 2010. Of course, as with the plaque commemorating the Jeffrey property, one might never know that this is the site of one of the worst inland oil spills in U.S. history. The signs remain, but one needs an experienced semiotician to decipher them. (In our case, we had Beth Wallace and Jay Wesley of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources to give us the real story.)
And this is more or less the story of the Kalamazoo River as it currently exists. It has been scrubbed clean– washed, dredged, cleared, and restored. But it’s been scrubbed clean not just of dilbit (well, almost scrubbed clean of dilbit!). It’s also been scrubbed clean (again, almost) of why and how it was scrubbed clean. Because so much of the property along the river was purchased– by necessity– by Enbridge, there are no explicit references to the spill, its causes and its aftermath. That history is knowable only by subtle marks and traces, like the story the Jeffery family sign does not tell, like the black line left behind on the concrete bridge that only experts know about, Or by mile markers like the one below, which indicate the distance the oil flowed downriver (what do they signify to those who do not know the story of the spill?). Or by some Enbridge workers in orange vests doing who-knows-what at the river’s edge (this being a group of journalists, you can rest assured that they descended on those guys like a pack of wolves).
Just how clean has the Kalamazoo River been cleaned? Well, one experienced journalist-kayaker (not the person pictured: that’s Beth Wallace looking right at home kayaking) remarked upon how the river seemed to lack “structure.” That is, the farther you traveled along it, you had this odd feeling like the beauty of the river was somehow a little off, a little too neat, too tidy. There were no obstructions– no big rocks, no fallen trees, none of those things that a river just accumulates over the ages, the things that provide a habitat for all manner of critters: sunbathing spots for turtles, bivouacs for fish.
So what you come to realize is that the Kalamazoo River, although quite nice, is now a man-made river, an artificial river, the kind of river one might encounter at, say, Disneyland. Honestly, it put us in mind of some fancy French theorizing we read way back in graduate school. In the 1980s, a theorist by the name of Jean Baudrillard wrote a little book called Simulacra and Simulations (in French). Baudrillard’s idea was that the world we now inhabit (the “postmodern” world) is so full of copies and reproductions (you can walk the streets of New York in a Las Vegas casino; you can visit Paris by going to Disney in Florida) that we have not only lost the “real.” Reality itself now seems to imitate the copies of reality. As Baudrillard puts it, “The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory—precession of simulacra—that engenders the territory.”
Take Talmadge Creek, for instance: one of the most striking things we learned on our trip was that in order to clean it up, Enbridge essentially had to destroy the creek. They excavated a swath thirty feet wide (the creek is maybe three or four feet wide)– creek bed, vegetation, everything. Then they basically recreated the creek. How? Well, apparently based on Google map images, making Talmadge Creek a creek that quite literally copies a map. This is a textbook example of what Baudrillard called the “hyperreal.” Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River (a portion of it, anyway) are no longer “real” bodies of water. They are hyperreal. They are Enbridge’s recreations of bodies of water, corporation-created creeks and rivers that mimic real creeks and rivers. So when you walk along Talmadge Creek or you canoe the Kalamazoo, you are having an experience owned, operated, and created by Enbridge– whether you know it or not.
So while the river was, to the inexperienced eye, very clean, and while the canoe trip was quite pleasant on a beautiful May day, after thinking about all of this, after reminding ourselves of how the river came to be the river it is today, we still felt a little dirty.
A couple of weeks ago, we received a letter from our right of way agent announcing that he’s moving on to another job close to his home in Minnesota. As strange as it seems to say it, we’re actually sorry to see him go. The truth is that during the construction phase of the project, he was very responsive to us– far more so, from what we’ve heard from many other landowners, than most other land agents. We’ve been sort of lucky in this regard.
In fact, this week we learned just how true that it. Our agent left us with a couple of new land agent contacts for the restoration phase. We called one of them to check on the status of restoration and because we wanted to ensure that our topsoil situation would be handled properly. The agent was not responsive. He seemed annoyed by the call, didn’t have any information for us regarding when we could expect restoration to begin on our property, and was disinclined to even bother looking into our situation. So you can imagine our surprise when, the very next day, crews arrived to begin restoring our property.
So we called him again. Same response: he just wasn’t interested. He didn’t even want to come out and talk with us as we asked. Frankly, he was so unhelpful and apparently annoyed that we were even calling him, that we’re tempted to do something we’ve never done before and name him by name. But we won’t. (However, if you’re on phase one and you want to know who NEVER to call, send me a note and I’ll tell you who to avoid.)
The good news is that the supervisor of the restoration crew and the environmental inspector were both VERY helpful. We had satisfying conversations with both about the items on our line list and what we wanted to happen with restoration. And they appear to have made sure all of those things happened. As always, we took some photos:
The crew– here’s more good news: almost all of them, they told us, are from Michigan– worked remarkably fast. First, they moved our pile of timber (which they were supposed to have moved when the took the trees down).
Then they decompacted the subsoil (or so the environmental inspector said; we’re a little nervous about this).
Then– but only because I asked about it– they moved the big pile of wood chips we wanted saved. These chips were supposed to be hauled away when construction started. But since they didn’t take them away, we thought we’d keep them for mulch. Our line list said to move them to the back of the property, but the crew apparently didn’t know that (more on this in a minute).
But finally, they were placed in the right spot– it’s a much bigger pile than we thought!
We did get a couple of nice surprises. This daisy was on the edge of the temporary workspace– and survived.
Even better, buried underneath that pile of shredded wood were these bearded irises, white for lack of sunlight for months, but still alive. True survivors!
Crews aren’t quite finished yet, though things look a lot better now– no more orange fence! And we are (mostly) satisfied with this phase of restoration. Yet lots of questions marks about re-vegetaation remain. And there are some important lessons for those of you yet to go through this, whether you are on phase one or on phase two. For instance,
Be sure you touch base with your land agent before restoration begins on your property. Reiterate the items on your line list and mention any new concerns or instructions you might have.
The only downside to doing that, unfortunately, is that not all right of way agents are reliable or effective communicators. So no matter what you say, it might not make it to the construction crews. Therefore, if at all possible, try and find the restoration crew supervisor before they begin. Repeat your concerns to him.
Similarly, if you can find the environmental inspector– there should be one on your property at some point– seek her or him out and discuss any concerns.
We are fortunate to have the kinds of work schedules that allow us to be here to see what’s happening most of the time. We’re sure that’s not true for everyone. So this next piece of advice will be more difficult for some of you. Nevertheless, as best you can, BE VIGILANT. Check on what’s happening on your property. Watch when you can. As much as you are able, be your own inspector. The crews are generally good people (in our experience) and respectful. But communication from land agents isn’t always what it should be, so they might make unwitting mistakes. Watch for them.
Lastly, if you are on phase two and won’t experience restoration for a very long time, it’s not too early for you to be thinking about these things also– even if you don’t yet have an agreement with Enbridge. Think about what you want to happen on your property once the project is completed. Think about what is unique about your property and important to you and what measures should be taken to ensure that those concerns or unique features are appropriately addressed– then have those things put into your line list. If phase two readers would like it, we’d be happy to work up a separate post on the kinds of things one might have put on a construction line list.
In the meantime, we’ll continue to report on restoration matters as they progress. Please let us know what’s happening– good or bad– on your property as “clean up” continues.
Haven’t meant to be neglectful of late; sometimes spring activities get a little out of hand!
For now, we just want to say that restoration– by which we mean restoration headaches– have begun. We are already irritated and concerned. Details coming soon.
Whew! The semester has finally ended, grades have been recorded, and we finally have a little time to post. To compensate for the recent lull, we’re pleased to announce the launch of a new series! This past Friday, we were fortunate to participate in an exciting program. The excellent people at the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources were generous enough to let us tag along with their 16 (or so) Fellows– journalists from all over the country and Canada– for a portion of their Kalamazoo River Institute. Jennifer Bowman of the Battle Creek Enquirerhas a story on the Institute this morning.
Friday was devoted to the Marshall disaster and its aftermath. The journalists met and interviewed officials from the EPA, the Michigan DNR and DEQ, representatives from Enbridge (well, Jason Manshum), MSU scientist Steve Hamilton (who at this point probably knows more about cleaning up dilbit than anyone on the planet), our friends Beth Wallace from the NWF, Josh Mogerman from the NRDC (nice to finally meet him in person!), and Sue Connolly and Deb Miller. We also made new friends in fellow landowners (on phase 2) David and Karin Gallagher– we’ll bring you their grisly story in the second installment of the series– who graciously invited all of the Institute participants to their home.
One of the highlights of the day was a canoe trip along a two-mile stretch of the Kalamazoo River, following the path of the oil. Although there’s more to be done, the good news is that the river is bouncing back and it really is quite beautiful. Here’s a shot:
In all, it was a terrific experience and we’re deeply grateful to Dave Spratt and Adam Hinterthuer from IJNR for letting us tag along and speak to the journalists. We met lots of smart, interesting people– and we’re looking forward to seeing what kinds of stories the fellows produce. But as we wait, we plan to do some ruminating of our own on the experience in a few installments. In the meantime, here’s a video from the Battle Creek Enquirer taken at Dave Gallagher’s house. If you watch closely, you might even catch us in a brief (but silent) cameo!
Just when the disheartening spectacle of snow in late April threatened to extinguish the last remaining shred of hope that springtime in Michigan would ever return, we experienced this afternoon what for months has seemed an impossible fantasy, nothing more than a (ahem) pipe dream: a view of our backyard utterly free of visible green steel pipe. It’s true! Just look:
Of course, there’s still the orange fence and the shredded remains of our beloved trees and the big yellow tractor-things and all the piles of timber and the mud…. But hey, we’re trying to look on the bright side: the steel pipe is gone!
