Trying to save our state

Yesterday was probably not a good one for Richard Dale Snyder, ex-governor of the state of Michigan.  He had earlier been removed as a defendant in a class action lawsuit brought by the victims in the Flint water crisis.  But on April Fool’s Day, a federal judge reinstated charges against him. After reviewing the case, U.S. District Judge Judith Levy wrote that those suing “plausibly state that the governor acted indifferently to the risk of harm they faced, demonstrating a callous disregard for their right to bodily integrity.”  She also notes that “instead of mitigating the risk of harm covered by the contaminated water, he covered it up.”              

What the final outcome of this will be is anyone’s guess.  The state, by the way, has already spent millions on Snyder’s legal fees, and more than $30 million for the legal expenses of various state employees involved in the Flint water crisis.

But it ought to be clear that Snyder has never been one who put people over profits, except perhaps himself.  He showed that most glaringly on his way out the door, when, during the last infamous lame-duck session of the legislature, he rammed through a package to allow Enbridge to keep operating the 66-year-old twin pipelines named Line 5 that lie at the bottom of the Mackinac straits.  They were supposed to encase those pipelines in a concrete tunnel.

A rupture in those pipelines could easily damage Lakes Huron and Michigan to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, and could even render them totally beyond repair. These pipelines are owned by Enbridge, a Canadian firm with a poor safety record whose negligence and incompetence caused a billion-dollar mess in the Kalamazoo River nine years ago.

Very little of the millions of gallons of fuel that flow through them every day is meant for Michigan, with the exception of some propane for the Upper Peninsula. This is essentially just a way of moving oil from one part of Canada to another part of Canada.

We could replace the propane the UP needs by other methods. But Snyder was so eager to please Enbridge that the bill contained many errors, and two of the three people he appointed to run it had to resign within days. Fortunately, the voters last November elected a governor and an attorney general who both care about people, the planet and the Constitution.

Last week, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel found that the law they rammed through to create a tunnel authority was unconstitutional, principally because the title of the bill didn’t match what it was intended to do. “It wasn’t even a close call,” she told me. 

Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a lawyer herself, agreed with her findings, and ordered the tunnel authority to cease and desist.

The Republican leaders in the legislature bitterly disagreed, of course. Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, who is not a lawyer, called it “shameful,” and said “the attorney general does not have the power of scrutiny over constitutional issues,” which is dead wrong.

There’s a hidden danger here, though: What if Enbridge just shrugs, says fine – and keeps operating this aging pipeline as it now is?   Almost certainly, the attorney general is going to have to be prepared to take them to court to shut Line 5 down.

That may cost the taxpayers a lot of money.  But it will be more than worth it. For nothing would be as expensive, or scary, as what a massive spill could do to the Great Lakes.