This weekend, we offered a minor example of construction crews taking liberties with our property. In the comments, our friends Carol and Carol offered up tales of their own (doubtless there are dozens more stories all along the route). Here are a couple of pictures from Carol Banks’ property of construction crews disregarding the boundary fence. Ugh.
Last week, we mentioned another line list violation on our property. This is, you might recall, an ongoing problem. First there was the matter of moving the neighbor’s dirt to our lot, then there was the dumping of the neighbor’s sludge into a hole on our property. And then this past week, we saw this:
Crews were cutting down trees two properties over. Inexplicably, they then brought the logs over to our property and started dropping them on to our “save” pile. Why? We have no idea. But we can tell you that we didn’t like it. We notified our ROW agent and he made sure they stopped. The explanation was that they thought they were doing us a favor, assuming that we would want more fire wood.
We don’t know whether that explanation is an honest one; perhaps it is. And we also recognize that this is a relatively minor matter; we know that we’re a little sensitive about these things. And it’s not even that we might not want the wood. Rather, it’s the principle of the thing. The issue– you’d think this would be obvious by now–is respect for us and our property. Having a right of way does not mean that crews can do whatever they please, however they please.
Happy Monday! We hope you all enjoyed your weekend. We did not, given what happened in the NFL playoffs (but that’s another matter).
We don’t know what’s happening in your neighborhood (let us know!), but construction crews have been busy busy busy here on Oakhill Road. And just his afternoon– not 10 minutes ago– we watched as crews once again violated our construction agreement. We’ve got pictures and will explain later. In fact, we’ll run down the whole list to date.
In the meantime, we thought we’d share a few remarks by our friend Beth Duman, who has been ruminating on those holiday cherries. Her comments are so spot-on we thought they deserved a bit of space in a post. Here’s Beth:
Neighbors???
We, too, are offended by the “Neighbors’” rhetoric that Enbridge is using. We have great neighbors – they are responsible, friendly and always ready to lend a hand when we need them. Enbridge has invaded our neighborhood – violated our privacy for months; run giant noisy machines past our windows, clogged our yards with clouds of dust, despoiled our landscaping, left piles of tires along our roads, and even planted an outhouse in the middle of one of our good neighbor’s front yard. Let’s get real – Enbridge has not kept their promise to move through our neighborhood quickly so our disturbance would be short-term. Rather than neighbors, they’ve moved in like an alien army, doing what they please, pillaging our land and holding us hostage to their project of financial gain.
….and they think a box of chocolates will make it all better… it sounds like a textbook abusive relationship to us!
We have long said that Enbridge’s problems with landowners are easily fixed; it’s just not that complicated. It is so uncomplicated, in fact, that even a child gets it. Here’s proof, courtesy of Kim Savage’s 9 year old son Shaun:
And here is a clear illustration of how Shaun’s system would work:
Thanks to Shaun for letting us publish his solution. We hope Enbridge sees it. Incidentally, we can’t help noting that Shaun’s not just a clever problem solver and a fine artist; he’s also an exceedingly well-behaved young man.
As we mentioned a few days ago, construction crews were pretty busy on our property over the past few weeks. Specifically, they were pulling a string of pipe about 500 feet long beneath the road just to the east of us. Our property was the staging area for this activity. And if it weren’t for some potentially frustrating line list violations, we kind of enjoyed watching the fascinating process and learning about it from the workers, a generally nice bunch of people. (For the record, we’ve spoken with more than 20 workers on our property. So far, we’ve met only 3 who are from Michigan. We don’t know whether that’s a representative sample, but it does cause one to be a little skeptical of all of Enbridge’s claims of creating lots of local jobs.)
Anyway, we took photos and video of the process and thought some of you might be interested. So here’s a slideshow. Click on the first image to start it:
And then they start pulling. It took a few hours to pull it all.
We hope all of you who celebrate Christmas had a lovely day yesterday– well, actually we hope everyone had a lovely day yesterday. We are currently in our hometown hunkering down and watching a blizzard develop.
A week or so ago, we promised you a semi-positive tale, which in the spirit of Christmas it seems appropriate to share with you now:
As we’ve mentioned before, from what we’re hearing, our parcel appears to be about the only property along the Line 6B route where any construction activity at all is taking place. In fact, our property has been a staging area for a lot of pipe that’s going into the ground on adjacent properties (nobody ever told us about this beforehand, even though it’s a fact that might well have affected our negotiations). Here’s what our backyard has looked like the past couple of weeks:
Last week and the week before, construction crews were busy at work on our property. They bored a hole and pulled some 500 feet of pipe underneath the road just to our east. We confess that it’s a pretty fascinating process and we kind of enjoyed learning about it from talking with and watching the construction crews at work. (We’ll post a slideshow of the process later today.)
At any rate, it was a good thing we were watching and talking with the construction crews: a week ago last Saturday, when it looked like they were about to begin pulling the pipe, we went out and asked when they would get started (because we wanted to capture some video). We were told that they probably wouldn’t start until “tomorrow.” It took a minute, but we quickly realized that “tomorrow” happened to be Sunday. And according the construction line list agreement we made with Enbridge, there would be no construction work on our property on Sundays (except in emergencies). So we called our ROW agent. He answered, seemed surprised, said he’d look into it and call us back. In an hour or so, he did call back and assured us the crews had been notified that they cannot work on Sundays; they’d re-commence Monday morning.
Now, this may not be quite the sort of responsiveness that you get if you’re a fancy doctor all decked out in hunting gear, but our ROW agent was plenty responsive. And we’re grateful for it. In fact, it’s only fair to say that in general, our ROW agent has been (from what we’ve heard) much better than most when it comes to attending to landowner concerns during construction.
Of course, if this moderately positive story (we don’t want to go overboard with praise; after all, we’re really just talking about somebody doing his job) was Enbridge’s Christmas gift to us, we also have to note that it was wrapped up in some pretty crappy paper. For one thing, if we hadn’t been out there talking to construction crews ahead of time, we never would have known of their plans to work on Sunday. Chances are they would have worked on Sunday.
And then, a few days later, there was this little episode: we happened to notice the back-hoe operator digging a big hole on our property and taking bucketsful of dirt over to the neighbor’s property. Here it is:
We’ve noted before that construction crews are a bit too cavalier (in our view) about moving dirt and soil from one property to another. So we watched. What we saw was not just that they were taking subsoil from our property over to the neighbor’s; they were returning with bucketsful of stinky muddy sludge from the neighbor’s and dumping it into the hole on our property. This one, we took care of ourselves.
Again in fairness, the construction foreman was very nice (as almost all of the construction workers have been), responsive, and apologetic; he acknowledged that the backhoe operator shouldn’t have been dumping the sludge onto our property and put a stop to it.
But in both of these instances, what if we hadn’t been home? What if we hadn’t been watching? What if we hadn’t been vigilant? It makes us wonder what happens on our property when we’re not there? It makes us wonder what happens on your property.
The Northwest Times of Indiana reports this morning that Enbridge won’t break ground on phase two of the project until this summer, pending IDEM approval. The reason for the delay? Citizens advocacy and the fantastic work of our friends at Save the Dunes and other organizations. At least that’s what Tom Hodge says:
Hodge said he believes the project would have remained on schedule for a year-end completion “if there hadn’t been any voices of public opposition raised,” pushing the IDEM public hearing process.
Just one little note for Tom Hodge (we hope he’s reading): we really wish that you and your Enbridge colleagues would stop referring to the raising of legitimate concerns, the reasonable calls for caution, and the asking of questions as “opposition.” As the article puts it,
a coalition of environmental groups issued a joint statement of concern about the project, urging the state to take extra steps to ensure Lake Michigan and its tributaries will not be compromised by the project or a breach of the pipeline.
A “statement” of concern asking for reasonable safeguards and safety measures is not “opposition.”
Anyway, it appears (or so we hope) that IDEM is taking citizen concerns seriously and plans to deliberate carefully before issuing permits. We applaud them for their prudence.
Despite the most recent Enbridge construction newsletter, which provides little valuable information (although it does feature Enbridge’s rugged Michigan poster-boy “Dr. Michael Milan” all decked out in his hunting camos), we know a lot of you are wondering where all the construction crews have gone as you stare out at the forlorn stretches of steel pipe lazing around in your yards. We wondered the same things for weeks until activity picked up on our property very recently. Well, rest assured that we still try hard to keep you all informed, so we wrote to Project Manager Tom Hodge and asked why nothing was happening in so many places. He was traveling when we asked (to Hobart, where he appears to have won the hearts of local residents), but he did respond quickly (although he hasn’t followed up as we also requested; if we learn any more, we’ll let you know.). Here’s what Hodge said: “our difficulties securing right of way have led to much more moving around than normal and resulted in crews leaving work unfinished in multiple locations between Stockbridge and Ortonville.”
Looking around our own neighborhood, that fact is quite evident. Two parcels to the west of us, not an inch of soil has been touched, even though it’s been mayhem on our own. In fact, here’s a taste of what they did this week; they bored and pulled nearly 500 feet of pipe underneath our road (more pics and video of this activity coming soon):
To the extent that Enbridge gives any thought to us here at the Line 6B Citizens’ Blog (and they probably don’t think about us very much), we would guess that they find us rather antagonistic, combative, overly-critical, possibly even unfair. But the truth is, we’re trying to help them. We’re not joking. This has been the case ever since we popped into the Enbridge corporate offices in Superior, Wisconsin to have a chat about how they treat landowners. In fact, just yesterday, we offered some helpful suggestions about how they could improve their public relations efforts. We honestly believe it wouldn’t be that hard for Enbridge to win us all over: they just have to do what they say. We offered the same advice to them at the Pipeline Safety Trust conference last month.
Why are we thinking about this sort of thing now? Well, because the latest news out of Brandon Township has us once again shaking our heads. It demonstrates– yet again–how Enbridge’s actions actually work at cross-purposes to their own objectives. You see, last week, they were in a MAJOR hurry to reach an agreement with Brandon Township; they did everything but turn cartwheels to ensure that that happened. Nevertheless, Jeff Axt and myself cautioned the Board, asking them to exercise a bit of prudence and not allow themselves to be rushed into an agreement. (Caveat: we weren’t urging them not to reach an agreement, only to take their time.) Enbridge was having none of that. They said that waiting just one more week for the Trustees to give the agreement a careful reading would give them heartburn.
What happened next? Well, the Trustees voted to approve the agreement that night pending some adjustments to its language and Enbridge almost immediately went back to work in Brandon Township— which is all they ever really wanted to do anyway.
But here’s the important part: they went back to work despite the fact that they did NOT have a signed agreement with Brandon Township. This, to put it kindly, is a bit presumptuous. And sure enough, at this week’s meeting, the Trustees were not at all happy with the final version of the agreement. Nor were they happy with the fact that Enbridge had commenced construction in the township without a signed written agreement. So now Brandon has once again asked Enbridge to halt its construction activities in the Township.
So what did all of Enbridge’s pressure on the Brandon Trustees last week gain them? Nothing. They’re right back where they started. In fact, they now might have to endure further delays, since the Trustees are probably feeling a little bit disrespected and are likely much more inclined now to be circumspect. It could be another week, or two, or more, before the Trustees are ready to sign the agreement.
If Enbridge had only allowed the Brandon Trustees to take their time; if only they had acted in the spirit of reaching an amicable agreement, rather than acting (selfishly) according to their own desperate desire just to get back to work; if only they’d done that, they’d be back at work. Now, it appears they have to wait even longer. And, as always, they did it to themselves.
We hope that Hodge and Curwin and Asthon have some Tums.
As we mentioned this past week, we finally received a response from Enbridge regarding their claim that certain features of the new pipe exceed federal regulations. We are very grateful to Enbridge’s Terri Larson for getting us a reasonably thorough answer. Terri strikes us as genuine and reliable.
But federal regulations are a complicated affair, which makes scrutinizing Enbridge’s claim fairly tricky. We’re working on it. In the meantime, we thought we’d link to this excellent and very important article at ProPublica by way of providing some context for the discussion that’s to come. Plus, you get to read the remarks of one of our heroes: Carl Weimer, the Executive Director of the Pipeline Safety Trust. You don’t want to miss Carl saying this:
Given the limitations of government money and personnel, it is often the industry that inspects its own pipelines. Although federal and state inspectors review paperwork and conduct audits, most on-site pipeline inspections are done by inspectors on the company’s dime.
The industry’s relationship with PHMSA may go further than inspections, critics say. The agency has adopted, at least in part, dozens of safety standards written by the oil and natural gas industry.
“This isn’t like the fox guarding the hen house,” said Weimer. “It’s like the fox designing the hen house.”