Tales and lessons from the NTSB report, Part 3

Tales and lessons from the NTSB report, Part 3

by | Aug 27, 2012 | 2 comments

Today, we return to our series on tales and lessons from the NTSB report on the Marshall spill (read Part 1 and Part 2). Those of you who have been with us for a while know that we’ve been reading it so you don’t have to. But we encourage everyone to read it. Frankly, we think it should be required reading, if not for all Michigan citizens, then at least for every public official in the state–and we know from conversations with them that more than a few of our elected officials have not read it. In fact, the report should probably be required reading for all Michigan schoolchildren. Perhaps we’ll start writing to the MDE…

Anyway, we’re thinking more today about the requirements listed in the Brandon Township resolution. Several of these items involve technical improvements in the pipeline, enhancements drawn from Enbridge’s statements about the standards they’ll use for their Canadian Northern Gateway project. These enhancements are undoubtedly a very good thing and we once again applaud the Brandon trustees for asking for similar standards here in the U.S. That being said, however, what the NTSB report teaches us is that when it comes to Enbridge, technology isn’t really the problem; humans are. Which leads us to the topic of this part of our series:

Part 3: Technology is not enough    (more…)

Tales and lessons from the NTSB report, Part 2

Tales and lessons from the NTSB report, Part 2

by | Aug 5, 2012 | 4 comments

One of our readers recently asked an important question about the availability of a detailed map showing the route of Line 6B. As far as I know, no such map is readily available to the public; Enbridge posts only a general map of the pipeline’s route across Michigan online. But that map doesn’t do you much good if, say, you live near the Talmadge Creek in Marshall and you suddenly begin to smell a foul odor, but aren’t sure where it’s coming from. It’s not very likely that your first guess is going to be that the source is a Canadian corporation’s 30-inch diameter underground pipe transporting diluted bitumen.   (more…)

Tales and lessons from the NTSB report, Part 1

Tales and lessons from the NTSB report, Part 1

by | Aug 4, 2012 | 4 comments

If you haven’t seen it yet, the NTSB Pipeline Accident Report on the 2010 Enbridge spill in Marshall, Michigan is a riveting– and revealing– document. Still, we understand that 100-plus pages of fact-finding released by a federal regulatory agency isn’t exactly everyone’s idea of fun summer reading. So for that reason, we’re launching a new series, in which we’ll tell you some stories drawn from the NTSB report and try to draw some lessons relevant to the Line 6B project. Here’s our first installment:

Part 1: Does Enbridge Learn from its Mistakes?  (more…)