by Jeffrey Insko | Oct 18, 2012 |
If you haven’t seen it yet, Inside Climate News has published another fine piece by David Hasemyer. This one focuses on what we in the article call the “shocking and shameful” silence of Michigan elected officials on Enbridge. Check it out. Share it. Write your representatives!
A few other items of note have appeared in the past couple of days:
Despite the protests of some county residents, the Livingston County commissioners approved an Enbridge easement across its airport. Despite this, we were impressed by the remarks of Jeannette DiFlorio in pushing back against the plan:
“Many homeowners along the route of the pipeline feel no one in government is standing up for them, and they are left to fight by themselves for fair treatment from a wealthy corporation,” DiFlorio stated. “That’s not right.”
In Canada, Enbridge has just received approval to reverse the direction of Line 9, which runs from the Sarnia terminal to Hamilton (in Canada). Sarnia just happens to be where our own Line 6B terminates. We’re not sure what, if anything, this could mean. But it gives us some pause.
Finally, the National Wildlife Federation is set to release a report about Enbridge’s Line 5 expansion, which crosses water near the Mackinac Bridge. NWF’s Beth Wallace says,
“We’re concerned about the state of the pipeline and whether adding horsepower to its pumping stations will put it at risk of a similar leak.”
We’re looking forward to the full report, which we plan to discuss more once we’ve read it in full.
by Jeffrey Insko | Oct 16, 2012 |
Yesterday was a record-breaking day, in terms of traffic, on the Line 6B Citizens’ Blog. We don’t know if that is attributable to Enbridge’s letter in the Detroit Free Press— though if it is, we’d like to thank them for the little boost! Whatever the case, we are grateful to everyone who stops by, we hope you’ll return, and we’ll continue to try and make it worth your while.
In this post, we’ll wrap up our extended discussion of the Enbridge letter/ad. If you missed the earlier installments, please take a look at parts 1 and 2 and 3. (more…)
by Jeffrey Insko | Oct 15, 2012 |
Today, we’ve been dissecting the letter Enbridge published– well, the ad they paid for– in yesterday’s Detroit Free Press. In our last post, we focused on just one sentence, the (perhaps purposefully) opaque one where Vice President for Major Projects Execution Mark Sitek says, “There has been much discussion involving information from various sources that are not necessarily familiar with the pipeline industry or our projects, so over the next four weeks we will use space in this newspaper to share project updates and to address some of these questions.”
Now let’s finish that paragraph. Here it is in full: (more…)
by Jeffrey Insko | Oct 15, 2012 |
We haven’t finished with our review and commentary of the Michigan Townships Association amicus filing in the federal lawsuit initiated by POLAR. We’ll return to that soon. But we’re taking time away from that to remark upon the extraordinary ad, in the form of a letter to “neighbors,” published by Enbridge in yesterday’s Free Press. In our first post, we noted how it’s more than a little strange that Enbridge has chose to open up lines of communication more than a year after they first filed for MPSC approval of the project.
This, our second installment on the letter signed by Vice President for Major Projects Execution Mark Sitek, will focus on just one sentence. It’s our favorite one in the whole letter. Sitek says:
(more…)
by Jeffrey Insko | Oct 15, 2012 |
All of a sudden, Enbridge wants to share information.
A full page ad appeared in yesterday’s Detroit Free Press featuring a letter by Enbridge Vice President Mark Sitek. And it’s a doozy. In fact, the letter is so artfully constructed, so disingenuous, so maddening, that it’s going to take us multiple posts to contend with it. We’re going to go paragraph by paragraph, so hang on. (more…)
by Jeffrey Insko | Oct 12, 2012 |
And it’s very good news indeed! We’ve just learned of a new filing in the POLAR lawsuit that is now in federal district court. Just yesterday, the Michigan Townships Association filed an amicus curiae brief in support of POLAR’s complaint, arguing that in the MTA’s view Enbridge is legally required to seek local consent prior to construction.
In our view, this is major; it is in many ways precisely the statement for which we’ve been waiting a very long time. Among other things, this means that Brandon Township is no longer alone– they’re now supported by dozens of townships all across the state.
We’ve obtained the filing from the court records and have begun looking it over. Stay tuned for more commentary and discussion once we’ve completed our review.
by Jeffrey Insko | Oct 12, 2012 |
Recently, we ventured the thesis that the reason Enbridge alienates stakeholders and creates distrust and opposition is because of its leadership– decades of leadership that that fails to adhere to its own stated values. With the retirement of CEO Patrick Daniel, we thought there might be some hope for a change in Enbridge’s corporate “culture of deviance,” as the NTSB labeled it. Unfortunately, recent indications point to more of the same under new CEO Al Monaco.
(more…)
by Jeffrey Insko | Oct 3, 2012 |
This morning, more outstanding reporting by David Hasemyer at Inside Climate News. More than anything else we’ve read, this one accurately gets to the heart of citizen resistance to Line 6B. Here, for example, is Kim Savage, who has always gotten it. She
said people understand the need for a new pipeline but object to the unsympathetic way Enbridge has gone about dealing with them and the evasive answers the company has given to questions.
“Enbridge simply needs to be more honest and forthcoming.”
And here is landowner Ken Weathers:
“I sure hope now Enbridge has a better understanding of the personal anxiety they have been causing people,” Weathers said. “It’s the principle of the thing.”
And Debbie Hense
wishes Enbridge would be more respectful of not only the trees she loves but of every landowner who faces the uninvited demolition and construction.
As we’ve said before and as we’ve tried to explain to Enbridge, it didn’t have to be this way. Had Enbridge treated landowners fairly and with respect from the beginning– as they claim to do– they wouldn’t be facing what Carl Weimer calls this “extraordinary” resistance. We wonder whether they’re listening now.
by Jeffrey Insko | Sep 24, 2012 |
This just in: two additional condemnation suits brought against landowners in Oakland County court have been dismissed– this time by a different judge than the one who ordered the dismissal last week. The grounds for the dismissal are similar (Enbridge overreaching), but there are some interesting and heartening nuances in this morning’s ruling. We’re looking over and digesting the relevant documents and will have more to say about this good news later today. Stay tuned.
by Jeffrey Insko | Sep 22, 2012 |
You would think that with all that’s happened over the past week– the Brandon “workshop” and Enbridge construction activity in Brandon despite the fact that the resolution issue remains unresolved, the dismissal in Oakland County Circuit Court of an Enbridge condemnation suit, and the news that a lawsuit by POLAR will now likely be heard in federal court— there would be a flurry of press coverage to review. But there’s not. We’ll assume that local reporters are still working on these stories.
What we do have is only this: a story in the Battle Creek Enquirer that has to be one of the more credulous reports we’ve seen in quite a long time; and a short one from one of our favorite local reporters, Susan Bromley of the Brandon Citizen, about the Brandon “workshop.” We especially like this sentence:
It appears Enbridge has not conceded to any of the [Township’s] demands, but instead gave extensive explanations as to why the replacement pipeline is various widths at various places.
