by Jeffrey Insko | Sep 11, 2013 |
A few interesting news items this week have got our gears turning a little– not the least of which is this chilling story about PHMSA in Inside Climate News today (you’ll recall that we’ve had some things to say about PHMSA in the recent past). If we can find the time, we hope to ruminate on them a little. In the meantime, we’re continuing our series of “Landowner Stories” in their own words. Today, a handful of short takes:
As one of the unfortunate landowners along the 6B pipeline who had to deal with the repair portion of the project, we have been dealing with Enbridge since early 2011. They didn’t do a good job then and they have not yet finished restoration on our property.
Our biggest complaint is that they approached us badly from the start. The first message we got from them was “do this our way or we will take you to court”. When we think about replacement of a pipeline we think “remove the old one and put in a new one.” But of course their plan was “give us more land that we can ruin and let the landowner pay the property taxes forever while we make billions.”
Finally, we have not been properly represented by our local, county, state or federal governments. We ask “how can a foreign entity come into Michigan and demand the use of property through eminent domain”? It seems terribly wrong.
—Ron Kardos and Marjorie Brigham-Kardos, Oceola Township
The past year has been hell!! We are far from a settlement on restoration and damages, as they relate to the condemnation of our farm. Nothing has been done. We live with weeds up to my waist, dust when it’s dry, mud when it rains. We TRIED to come to an agreement in six separate meetings. Enbridge lied, bullied, attempted coercion, telling me they didn’t need to cut down 25 feet of my forest and would go around part of my wetlands, if only I would sign without my husband present and no legal counsel review of the contract. Would I sign the Enbridge contract if I had to do over? ABSOLUTELY NOT!!
I hope to have the opportunity to tell our story to a jury. I want Enbridge to have to explain their behavior in Court. I want Enbridge’s dirty dealings to be a matter of public record.
—Carol Brimhall, Stockbridge
Even though I am no youngster (in my sixties) you would think I would know better; but I was surprised to witness the absolute worst of human nature this last year. From the first contact with the greedy, dishonest land agent to the unbelievably arrogant workers I saw extremes of every bad trait in human nature. Probably one of the worst parts of the experience this last year was the rude awakening that our government, from local township, to State Representative, Senator, and Governor, Public Service Commission, all do not care ONE SINGLE BIT what happens to the homeowners on the pipeline. It was a case of “if it isn’t adversely affecting me personally, then I don’t care”. It would take forever to list every terrible event, but the worst days may have been seeing Enbridge Oil violate the temporary work space and trespass on our property (again and again). Most days last winter required us to be outside in snowstorms, all day long sometimes to protect our personal property from being damaged by their equipment and snarky employees.
I think I can sum it up by saying, I believe Enbridge Oil gives potential hires an ethics test. But, if they pass it, then they don’t hire them!
—Anon., Groveland Twp.
The finishing touches were a little slow, but so far all promises have been kept. Fingers crossed!
—Robert Flynn, Howell
No restoration has begun on our property except for the septic field replacement that was compromised by Enbridge in the first place. No phone calls are being returned. No answers are being received. My husband Dave is so upset over this that he had a stroke last Saturday. We need more than empty promises. Our backyard is disgusting. Enbridge is a corporate bully who terrorizes their landowners. This has been a nightmare for the past 3 years of our lives. We want our fences back and the promised restoration completed without anymore lies.
—Judy Tanciar, Fenton
by Jeffrey Insko | Sep 10, 2013 |
If you missed it, we kicked off our new series on “Landowner Stories” yesterday. (We posted a general introduction to the series the day before that.) Marty and Patti Burke’s story is a moving one. Today, we bring you a second installment. And while we don’t plan to spend all of our time prefacing these stories with “I told you sos,” the truth is that we told ’em so. Today’s entry, from Allison Bader of Howell illustrates a couple of points we have made over and over and over again: first, that unhappy landowners are not just people who “oppose” the project. Allison makes quite clear that she was very much in favor of it. And second, that the land agent system is severely broken and is the source of much of Enbridge’s problem on this project. Too many people don’t know what to do once trust with their agent has been broken (and it is all too frequently broken!). Unless one is resourceful and persistent and able to track down someone other than one’s land agent to help, one is left helpless and lost.
By Allison Bader
Our land contractor was sweet as pie, always checking in on us if we had any questions, always aware of what was going on. We felt rushed to get the contract signed “now, now” because the project was getting started. Enbridge “needed” to take out 100 of my grandfather’s 30ft pine trees in order to save our pond. Only 2 were allowed to be saved and transplanted, but we had to Rush to move them WHILE the demolitions crew came through. Then the site was left for over a month before construction actually began.
I had problems getting ahold of the contractor when ground was being broken and our pond was not protected as it was supposed to be according to our contract. When I did finally get to talk to him, he suddenly had no idea what was going on, did not know who to ask for help, and did not know what to do about fixing it. I found the Environmental Specialist of the project myself and he had a whole team working on silt fences and other pond protecting measures that very day. I was very thankful to the crew for that. This summer one single worker took down the straw bales and straw roles around the pond just in time for it to rain and storm for the next week allowing dirt to run through the remaining silt fence and into our pond. Again our land contractor could not help us. I finally found a worker who got a team to put up a second silt fence to prevent further damage.
We did not expect 2 summers to be ruined by this project and feel that we were not compensated accordingly. We have since discovered that both neighbors on either side, who have equal land space taken over, received twice as much in compensation without 100 trees taken out or a ruined pond. We never even got a land-bridge to the back of our property, which had been in our contract.
Overall, I thought this was a necessary project that could have been completed in a timely fashion while benefiting the community with jobs for the construction crew and with business to our locals from the construction crew. I now think that the process was drawn out unnecessarily and that those higher up in the company did not find the landowners very important as their Update Letters seem to suggest.
A few side notes:
-My neighbor is still waiting for his drain tile to be fixed. The crew fixed our drain tile instead.
-I do hope my land restoration is complete and with grass grown by my wedding date next June.
by Jeffrey Insko | Sep 9, 2013 |
Today, we are proud to launch our new series: “Landowner Stories,” which will bring you the reflections of Line 6B landowners along Phase One– in their own words! Our first installment comes from Marty and Patti Burke, who live in Oceola Township. Their house is among those in closest proximity to the new pipeline.
The three barrels on the right mark the location of the pipe next to the Burkes’ home.
By Marty Burke
When I try to express verbally or in writing what the last two years has done to us both as a family and or community I become mentally/emotionally paralyzed a bit.
Lets take a look at the negative impact. For me unfortunately there still is not a single positive impact I can see here.
What has Enbridge taken from me?
1) My family’s sense of well being
That intangible feeling you have in your home that this is your place – your save haven – your central command of well being if you will. The place where you have to think, but just feel that it’s your place and because you have pride in it and work hard to pay for it no one can take it from you.
2) My trust in all levels of government from my township to the federal government.
I still struggle to understand every single day how my government, the exact people that are there, paid by me to protect my rights, to protect me from a foreign invader like Enbridge, could have abandoned me in my hour of need. That they could completely turn their backs on me and allow Enbridge without check to take my land/condemn my home and steal part of what I’ve worked for, paid for the last 20 years. I’ve canvassed all levels of governing bodies and found out that not one including our State/county/city/TWP regulators have a requirement for minimum distance a dwelling can be from a high pressure oil pipeline. How can that be when even our lowest level of regulation (TWP) can tell you how far your pole barn has to be from your garage or how far a shed can be from a property line but they have no requirement as to how far your home must be from an oil pipeline? Well, it’s pretty simple if they are involved in setting precedent that could cost Enbridge money (i.e., buying homes that violate the req.) they will be sued by Enbridge and they will lose. So … you and I pay the price for it. . . sounds reasonable, right?
3) My trust in law enforcement and the court system.
When I heard on our local Livingston county radio station that Our Sheriff was allowing Livingston county Sheriff’s deputies to work during their off time as contract security for Enbridge while wearing county uniforms/carrying weapons/driving county vehicles all paid for by the residents of Livinston county I just couldn’t believe it. How was this ever even considered by our Sheriff’s Dept.? How could they possibly have thought this would be in the best interest of our community?
How could it be that when I called 911 to report criminal trespass (by Enbridge) on our private road (Sue Dr.) the Sheriff’s Dept showed up and called the prosecutor’s office? The Livingston County prosecutor’s response was we won’t press charges on behalf of the residents of Sue. Dr.; it’s a civil matter, and I quote “the same as someone on Sue Dr. ordering a pizza and a pizza boy driving down the road.” Yet this same prosecutor was willing to press charges against me for not allowing Enbridge on my property because the site plan they had approved in court did not match what they laid out on my property (which included temporary workspace that was 3 feet from the foundation of my home). The Sheriff’s dept came to my home three times in this time frame to convince me to comply. The last time they brought a 400 lb process server to let me know it was my last chance before I go to jail – he also reminded me that my wife could be arrested too. I complied …. props to Enbridge ..they never lose, do they? Enbridge’s response to my situation would be this – it’s a shame Mr. Burke didn’t comply with us – none of this would have occurred.
4) My Privacy
A year before Enbridge ever broke ground on the line 6B project it was a beautiful sunny afternoon when my daughter came in from our pool and said dad a couple of guys came out of the woods and are in our back yard (remember I live on ten acres – this is not a normal occurrence). I was obviously not happy with this situation and went out to confront them.
They told me they were a contractor to Enbridge hired to do 3D mapping of my property. They were two football fields north of the Enbridge easement. They were in my backyard; the line is in my front yard. This was just the beginning of an endless cycle of unannounced visits by Enbridge and their agents/contractors often times in areas of my property that they no have right to be in.
Fast forward to construction phase – after a lengthy standoff the construction on my property commenced. Enbridge with all their prestigious Engineering savvy came to the conclusion at the last minute that they couldn’t dig the trench as close at it was planned to be to my house so they counterbored underground parallel to the front of my house under my driveway. Now at this point if I sit in my living room to chat with family/watch TV/read/work I’m looking at Enbridge workers walking back and forth in front of my home maybe 10 feet from my windows. They can look in (and they do) and see myself and my family – heck they can see what we’re watching on TV.
Construction vehicles and workers just a few feet from the Burkes’ home.
When I leave for work in the morning they are coming up my driveway – when I come home they are still there working – I can hear their voices from my kitchen while my wife and I are making dinner or talking. The sound of their equipment running constantly is maddening then slowly becomes numbing over time. There is a constant resonance/vibration in my home now and I can’t stop wondering is this hurting the structure of my home?
When I go out in my garage to work on a project there are Enbridge workers outside my windows and multiple Enbridge trucks parked 5 feet from my garage.
When I try to hunt on my property Enbridge workers call the Sheriff’s Dept. and tell them I’m shooting at them. And the Sheriff’s Dept. pays me a visit once again.
When I look out any window of my home I no longer see the beautiful views that I’ve grown used to. I now see workers, equipment, trucks, construction debris, mounds of dirt, and large holes and hazard orange ….hazard orange everywhere.
5) My Sense of well being.
One of the most insidious and difficult things to explain to someone not directly living this nightmare is the toll it takes on your general sense of well being. Not feeling like you’re coming home to your place of solace, instead dreading on a daily basis seeing the state of disarray your home is in. Not knowing how all of this will affect you this month, next month, or next year. Knowing you’re helpless to stop it. Knowing it will have a negative impact on the value of your home in already trying economic times. While these things may seem small to some on a point by point basis it has a cumulative effect on a person. In general you don’t feel hopeful about the outcome. This gut feeling spreads to other areas of your life like work for instance or social scenarios or family issues or health issues. You don’t always feel it but it’s there nonetheless.
Even connections we have with our neighbors are different, some are settling with Enbridge – others are not. Other ancillary issues arise that need consensus from all in the neighborhood, but now this is hard to come by as the “Enridge Effect” has polarized some and alienated others altogether, so coming together as a community just seems to be fractured.
I think this one has to be in the Enbridge handbook on disorientate, alienate, conquer, and divide. Props again to Enbridge.
6) Last but not least ….
The value of my property. Think about this …When Enbridge first approached us to get us to sign off on the “Plan” they had for our property their good faith offer was $6,000.00 . They had lots of charts and monkey math to show why this was more than fair. Keep in mind we would be closer to the proposed pipeline than any other home in our area.
Within a month we started hearing that some neighbors were settling with them with zero impact to their properties other than losing trees for ten times what they offered us.
Good Faith???? Enbridge’s approach to justifying what they do or don’t pay you for loss of value to your property due to their taking and their deplorable reputation is what the industry refers to as the Utility taking of your home.
They actually told me the utility they were taking was relevant due to the fact that there was already a pipeline there. Of course, they own the pipeline that was already there and we were never compensated for taking if you will. What a strange and self convenient logic …kind of like saying I shouldn’t pay for smashing your car because, it was already smashed -never mind the fact that I’m the guy who smashed it in the first place and never fixed it.
Bottom line is I’ve watched my homes value plummet while all others in my area are back on the rise. I have a nice, well maintained home on a beautiful piece of property only one issue – the new Enbridge easement now encompasses the front of my home. My home literally interrupts the north side of the easement.
For Enbridge this becomes a kind of self-fulfilling cost-save prophecy. The longer they wait to settle the less my house is worth (because of them). So the less the value of the taking they eventually pay for. The courts already allowed them to postpone my hearing date from June of this year to Sept of this year. I fully expect the court to allow them to postpone it again. It’s sheer ludicrousy. How can it be legal? How can it be happening?
How can our legal system allow a company with annual sales in the tens of billions to systematically rob individuals of just compensation? Never mind the dehumanizing effect Enbridge has on thousands upon thousand of individuals and families. They even get to offset their costs of doing business on the backs of real people, families, communities.
It truly is numbing and it truly is a nightmare. How can it happen in America? Who would let such a thing happen to us?
Who would put themselves in our shoes?
by Jeffrey Insko | Sep 8, 2013 |
This week, we’re going to relinquish a little bit of content-control of this blog in order to bring you a new, lengthy series: real stories from real Line 6B landowners. We’re going to let landowners tell you their own stories about their experience with Enbridge in their own words, with as little editorial intrusion from us as possible. But first, we’d like to say a few words in advance just by way of introduction to the series.
One of Enbride’s favorite strategies in the face of criticism has been to pretend that those who have been outspoken are really just a handful of disgruntled, hard-to-please complainers. Either that or all the ruckus is just the predictable rumblings of some easily dismissed “special interest groups.” Over the past year, we’ve seen various iterations of this specious point– from Patrick Daniel, from Larry Springer, from Tom Hodge, and, especially, from Jason Manshum. Not long ago, for instance, Manshum stated that, “the vast majority of landowners we’ve worked with are pleased with negotiations.” Like most things that Manshum says, that statement is almost completely unverifiable, unless Enbridge is sitting on some comprehensive survey of landowner satisfaction that they aren’t sharing, a survey that we and every landowner we know was not invited to participate in (in which case it wouldn’t be comprehensive). Larry Springer’s similarly disingenuous version of the same line a few months before was his statement that “In a minority of cases, Enbridge made several attempts to negotiate in good faith but was forced to resort to the court process.” (Seriously, has Springer spent 10 minutes in Michigan the past year? Does he really have the slightest clue as to what any individual negotiations were really like? Has he ever spoken to a single landowner on the Line 6B route, even when he had the chance? Does he have even the faintest idea as to whether the things he says about landowner relations are actually true?). Anyway, for a long time we’ve thought about how useful it would be to have some actual empirical data on this question of landowner (dis)satisfaction. After all, it is theoretically possible that it would actually prove Enbridge’s point and make us look like precisely the aberrant, tiny minority of complainers Enbridge would prefer to make us out to be. On the other hand, perhaps it would demonstrate just the opposite.
We’ve taken up this discussion before. In fact, you might recall that we even wrote to Manshum himself to ask whether he had any actual data to support his claims of overwhelming landowner satisfaction. But he never replied. You see, despite his misleading title of “senior adviser of community relations,” Manshum is not really in the business of forging relations with the community. His job is really just to toss out pleasing-sounding phrases for the press. Confronted with a real member of the community seeking to have a real discussion about real, substantive matters, Manshum (like the rest of Enbridge’s pre-programmed PR soldiers) ducks and dodges and hides.
Unfortunately, we have neither the time, the expertise, nor the resources to conduct the sort of careful study, controlling for all sorts of variables– what constitutes a “vast” as opposed to a simple majority? what counts as “pleased”? what happens if you exclude landowners who live on large farms or don’t occupy their property at all? what percentage of unhappy landowners is acceptable to Enbridge? — that could be empirically useful here. What we have instead are stories, lots and lots of stories. What’s interesting about them, though, is just how similar they are. We’re willing to accept– and forgive– the occasional “honest mistake,” which is how Enbridge reps like to describe certain incidents (we’ve heard this on multiple occasions). But when the same mistake happens not just a handful of times, but repeatedly, dozens of times… well, then we think you’re no longer dealing with mistakes; you’re dealing with patterns of behavior, standard practices, systemic problems.
So here’s what we did (in, we admit, a totally unscientific manner): we contacted as many landowners along Phase One as we possibly could and we asked them to reflect a little on the past year working with Enbridge. We asked them to be honest and to tell us what they thought and how they felt about their experience, bad, good, or otherwise. We asked them to pass along our call for contributions to their neighbors and others along the route whom we might not know.
Now, you could say– and we imagine Enbridge will say– that the responses we received and will share with you come from a self-selecting group. A bunch of complainers who are drawn to a complaining blog. Maybe that’s true. But we can say with certainty that our sample is far less selective (and much larger!), not to mention far less curated and orchestrated than what you get from the Enbridge marketing department when, say, they trot out “Dr. Michael Milan,” gussy him up in some fancy camo hunting gear, and have him pose for print ad photographs. So, while admittedly, it’s hard to say just how representative the stories we’re bringing you really are, there are enough of them to suggest that this is more than an aberration. And we can say with absolute certainty that you’ll be hearing from real landowners, ordinary people, your neighbors (to use a phrase Enbridge is fond of using)– not just a bunch of people who “are never going to be happy,” not “special interest groups,” not “professional opposition,” not even people who “oppose the pipeline,” and definitely not “revolutionaries.”
Our hope is that by gathering together a collection of these stories as a critical mass, Enbridge will, for once, set aside the defensiveness and the posturing, the denial and the carefully-honed messaging and do what it has thus far been either unwilling or unable to do: take a cold, hard, sober, honest look at itself, at the conduct of its land agents and representatives and its treatment of the fine people of the great state of Michigan, then decide for itself whether they have lived up to its own professed values.
Finally, if you are a landowner and haven’t heard from us or haven’t yet contributed, but would like to. Please send your thoughts and reflections here-– as long or as short as you like; a couple of sentences or a handful of paragraphy. We will happily maintain your anonymity if you prefer; just let us know whether you’d like your name to appear. Either way, we only ask that you specify your location (city, town, or township). We’re glad to respond to any questions as well.
