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.
How are things on your property?
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!
As the rain rains and the poor, nervous dog shakes and cowers from the thunder outside, we’re playing some catch-up here on the blog. Frankly, we’re a little swamped with posts-that-need-to-be-posted and not quite sure which ones to type up first. Earlier today, we brought you news of a promising legal development in Indiana, and we’ve got bad legal news from Michigan to share as well. We’ve also been bookmarking links to articles about the dreadful spill in Arkansas and plan to do a roundup post about that incident and its relation to Line 6B. And there are restoration matters to discuss and describe– specifically, an overdue tree post–as well. We’re not sure if we can get to all of it today, but we’ll get to some of it.
But this post is about none of those things. Instead, it’s an update on the frustrating dirt story we brought you last week. If you recall, construction crews mindlessly piled a mountain of subsoil right on top of our top soil– something that is not just bad practice, but in clear violation of their own stated procedures and our line list agreement. Needless to say, we contacted our right of way agent to try and resolve the matter.
As we’ve said before, during the construction phase of this project, our ROW agent has been quite responsive (more so, as we understand it, than many other agents, unfortunately). So last week, he came out along with the project’s environmental inspector. The inspector confirmed that we had, as he put it, a “legitimate gripe” and agreed that all of our top soil was compromised. To rectify the matter, our agent agreed to add to our line list a couple of important revisions: significant decompaction of our subsoil– our property has taken a real beating with heavy equipment, as it has more or less been the primary staging area for the immediate neighborhood– and, equally important, bringing in new top soil to replace the stuff ruined by mixing last week.
In terms of (hopefully) restoring our property to some remote semblance of what it was before– a green-wall of beautiful trees and a lush perennial garden, this is very important and give us a glimmer of hope that plants will grow and flourish back there again.
One of the things we have said repeatedly here at the blog is that Enbridge is largely in control of what we write about them. They have no one but themselves to blame that most of what we’ve written here has been critical. But here’s a post that illustrates the former point: on this matter of our dirt, Enbridge worked with us promptly, efficiently, and cooperatively to correct their mistake. We’re grateful for that.
Long time readers of this blog know (we hope) that we have always tried very hard not to dwell on our personal situation, even though we do occasionally report on what’s happening around our property. But when we do, we generally do it to illustrate more general principles about the way Enbridge often carelessly and thoughtlessly (or callously) conducts its business. So it is with the story we have to tell today.
First, just a little context. In the temporary workspace that Enbridge required on our property was a stand of over 100 trees (some of them were also within Enbridge’s existing easement) and our precious perennial garden, which we planned, dug, planted, and tended ourselves over a period of years. This is what it looked like the spring before Enbridge arrived:
Enbridge leveled all of it. And because there was nothing we could to to prevent them from doing so, we instead gave a great deal of thought and concern to restoration. We’re obviously not a farm, but in order to replant some version of our green wall and our garden, we need productive, fertile soil. From the start, this has always been our primary concern.
Our attempts to have some assurances about care and handling and restoration of our soil inserted into our agreement with Enbridge during negotiations were summarily rejected. Instead, they just referred us to their general remediation practices (we could show you the emails from our ROW agent) and said, essentially, “trust us.” They directed us to the “Environmental Impact Report” on file with the Michigan Public Service Commission for a description of those practices. So let’s take a quick look at a bit of that document.
Under “Clearing and Site Preparation” the report says that “All brush and other materials cleared from upland areas within the construction corridor will be placed as a windrow along the construction corridor and disposed of as agreed to with the landowner.” In our case, what Enbridge agreed to is this (from our construction line list): “Trees with with pink ribbons are to be cut and saved for landowner at NE corner of property. Trees without ribbons are to be cut and hauled away.”
Here is what that looked like after construction crews did their clearing:
Two things to note here. First, that pile of timber on the left side of the image? Those are the trees we asked to have saved. But that’s not, as the agreement states, the NE corner of the property. And second, see the piles all along the orange fence in the middle and right of the image? That’s the shredded remains of the rest of the trees. Those piles should have been hauled away– that’s what we wanted to happen; that’s what we were told would happen– according to our agreement. But as you can see, they weren’t. In fact, they’re still there now (as you’ll see in a moment).
Now, we never complained about either of these things. The timber placement isn’t really a big deal and while we feared the shredded material might eventually become a problem, we trusted that they’d keep it segregated and haul it away after the pipe is placed in the ground. And since we don’t really like to complain constantly, we let these things go.
Much more important than those matters is what the Enbridge Environmental Impact Report and our agreement have to say about the handling of soil (much of which, in our case, isn’t ordinarily topsoil as we brought in loads of rich garden soil when we created our perennial bed). And we’ll just reiterate that we invested a lot of love and sweat into that soil, which is why, as some of you may recall, we were so upset the day a bulldozer started pushing the neighbor’s weed-filled dirt onto our property.
Anyway, here’s what it says in the Impact Report:
Topsoil generally has physical and chemical properties that are conducive to good plant growth. To prevent the mixing of topsoil with less productive subsoil during construction, topsoil will be segregated in selected areas where soil productivity is an important consideration. A minimum one foot of separation must be maintained between the topsoil and subsoil piles to prevent mixing. Where the one foot separation cannot be maintained, a physical barrier, such as a thick layer of straw mulch, may be used between the spoil and topsoil piles to prevent mixing. Use of the physical barrier must be reviewed and approved by Enbridge on a site-specific basis.
So far more than the handling of cleared timber, we’ve always been concerned about this practice, especially the segregation of subsoil and topsoil. That’s why we had this listed also, very clearly, in our line list agreement, which says: “Separate topsoil from subsoil, upon completion restore topsoil to surface and properly de-compact the work area.”
It’s hard to see the pile of stripped topsoil in the picture above, but it’s on the far side of the piles of shredded material. Here are a couple of up-close pictures, the second from a different angle, of the pile of topsoil (in the foreground):
And here is just one more, looking along the temporary workspace line. Behind the orange fence, you can see the shredded material and the pile of topsoil to the left of that. Now, we can tell you that plenty of excavated subsoil was placed in close proximity to this topsoil, certainly closer than the one foot separation listed in the Report.
So where is this headed? Well, yesterday construction crews were hard at work on our property, finally putting the pipe in the ground. That means some serious excavation– the removal of lots and lots of subsoil. And in one place, where they will tie in to the pipe they bored underground several weeks ago, they had to install a big blue steel box because the slope of the trench walls are very steep. Here’s a look:
By now, we’re sure you know where this is going. All of that dirt (clay, really) they excavated to lay the pipe and install that big blue box had to be piled somewhere. Here they are piling it:
See where they put all that excavated subsoil? Yep, right on top of our topsoil and even spilling into and onto the shredded material. So much for segregation. Here is a shot from the same angle as the one of the topsoil above:
And here is a closeup of the new mixture:
As we said at the start of this post, we don’t like to dwell on our personal situation. Mostly that’s because we know very well that compared to many others affected by this project– like our friends Beth Duman and Amy Nash, not to mention plenty of other people we’ve heard from or heard about– we don’t have it so bad, even though the state of soil on our property does mean a great deal to us. Many good people along Line 6B are in far, far worse situations than we are. We are very sensitive to that fact.
But that doesn’t excuse these violations. In fact, the sort of thing we’re describing here has happened and is happening all up and down the line. Enbridge would have you believe that these are just mistakes, aberrations. That’s what we’ve been told in the past by Enbridge executives. Mark Sitek told us, “we’re not perfect.” Mark Curwin told us “mistakes happen.” And those things are probably true. We get that. We even let little mistakes (like the placement of those felled trees) pass.
But when these things happen repeatedly (we’ve documented how many just on our property?). when a large percentage (a third? half?) of landowners have each witnessed two, three, four, or more “mistakes” on their own properties, when the same sort of “mistake” is made over and over again, well, then it ceases to be a mistake and has to be called a pattern of behavior, evidence of shoddy practices. And it’s a pattern of behavior and a set of practices that are totally at odds with the way Enbridge presents itself to the public and with the way that Enbridge presented itself to the MPSC. In fact, as our citations from the Environmental Impact Report (submitted as evidence to the MPSC) show, Enbridge, one can only conclude, simply misrepresented to that agency the way that it conduct its business. (Not that the MPSC much cares.)
Now, we’re not without some slight measure of confidence– though we’re extremely wary– that Enbridge will try to take steps to make this situation with our soil right. But it’s going to take a fair amount of effort and convincing on our part, adding more frustrating experiences to our already rich store of them. And the fact is, as we have said dozens of times, it didn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t have to be this way. If only they just do as they say.
Well, some of it is anyway…
Ordinarily, we try not to take pleasure in the misfortune of others. But we have to admit to kind of enjoying it when this construction truck got stuck in the mud on our property this morning. It was sunk so deep they had to use the gigantic backhoe to drag it out.
In fact, we figure it’s some kind of cosmic payback for yesterday’s construction line list violation. You see, as we were trying to enjoy a quiet Sunday breakfast, construction crews gathered, fired up equipment, and started doing we’re-not-sure-what in our backyard. Here they are:
But our agreement clearly states that no work will take place on our property on Sundays. Our ROW agent promptly looked into the matter, which mostly took care of the problem– although our property was still a thruway for equipment for most of the day.
You might recall that a week or so ago we mentioned that we are so very sick of looking at the strings of green steel pipe in our backyard. Well, we’re still sick of it. And we asked our ROW agent and Project Manager Tom Hodge when we might expect that pipe to be placed in the ground and restoration to begin. Here is what we learned:
Because on a couple of properties just a few hundred feet from ours the pipe runs very close those property owners’ homes (we’re talking maybe 20 feet!), they are boring, rather than digging. This apparently takes a bit more time. But once they’ve done that, they can tie the pipe in our yard into that bore. If all goes well, they anticipate all of that to be completed in the next two weeks. Hooray!
Beyond that, Tom Hodge says that they hope to have everything in the ground– there are apparently still some spots over in the Stockbridge area and elsewhere to the east where crews are still tying in– by the end of April. Restoration will then begin as soon as the ground is dry enough for crews to work on it without leaving ruts and so forth.
As for the details of restoration, well, we’ve got some more inquiries in regarding some of those matters and will report to you what we learn if and when we learn some things.
Sam is sick of it, too.
This morning, Sam encountered this vaguely anthropomorphic-looking piece of construction equipment. He showed it who’s boss.
When we got up this morning, Sam (that’s the dog) said he’d like to wander the neighborhood to see the pipe. So we did. One of the construction workers, noting what a handsome boy Sam is, asked if he is an Irish Wolfhound. The answer is no. He is a German Wirehaired Pointer. But the real point of telling you about that little exchange? Well, judging from the guy’s accent, he is yet another worker who is not from Michigan.
A couple of days ago, we posted some pictures of Enbridge construction crews exceeding the TWS boundaries on our friend Carol’s property. We’ve got more pictures from Carol’s property this morning. This is a 14 foot open hole–it’s been open for days– with no construction fencing surrounding it. Aside from the obvious safety hazard, Carol notes, the lack of fencing is a violation of a stipulation in her construction agreement.
What’s happening on your property?
