LANSING, MI — So will the ancient oil and gas pipelines under the Straits of Mackinac, something environmentalists call a deadly threat to the Great Lakes, ever be shut down?
“Yes!” vows Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. True, the state approved construction of a tunnel to protect the controversial twin pipelines last month. True, Enbridge Inc., the Canadian firm that owns the lines is fighting ferociously to keep them open.
But Nessel, who promised to shut down the pipelines – usually known as “Line 5” — when running for the office in 2018, said in an interview that she is convinced the courts will uphold Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s decision last November to cancel the company’s easement, the right to use state land for the pipeline.
That easement was granted in 1953, and Michigan claims Enbridge has violated it on many occasions, and that the state has every right to revoke it. Enbridge disagrees, claims Michigan “lacks the authority” to cancel the easement, and has filed suit in federal court. The state has countersued, and contends the case belongs in state, not federal court. While Whitmer ordered the pipeline to be shut down in May, the court filings are likely to delay that.
Environmentalists, who earlier grumbled that the governor was delaying action on the pipeline, were enthusiastic when she moved to revoke Enbridge’s easement.
But they were taken aback when last month, Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, usually known as EGLE, officially approved construction of an underground concrete tunnel to house Line 5. In his last days in office in 2018, business-friendly Gov. Rick Snyder approved a deal to allow Enbridge to encase the pipeline in concrete instead of shutting it down.
That filled environmentalists with dismay. For years, they have fought to turn off the 67-year-old pipeline. They pointed out that the pipeline, which mostly takes oil from western to eastern Canada, has recently sprung leaks in several places where it runs above ground.
They noted too that its owner, Enbridge Inc. was responsible for a huge environmental disaster when another of its pipelines broke near the Kalamazoo River in 2010, pouring a million gallons of crude oil into a tributary of the river and badly polluting a wide area.
When that happened, incompetent Enbridge workers thought the line was only clogged, and forced more oil through it, making the problem much worse. The cleanup took more than five years and cost more than a billion dollars. “This is one of the worst environmental actors there is,” Michigan’s attorney general said of Enbridge.
But she was quick to add that the state’s approval of the tunnel construction did not mean that she or the governor was wavering in their opposition. “Giving them the permit was pro forma. They had to do that,” because Enbridge had satisfied all the technical requirements for a permit to be issued.
“I don’t think they intend to build the tunnel at all,” Nessel said. “It’s just a delaying tactic. Every day they make more profit.”
The politics of trying to shut down the pipeline are complex. There is no doubt of the environmental hazard. If it ruptured, both Lake Huron and Lake Michigan may be damaged beyond repair.
Environmentalists and liberal Democrats want them shut down—yesterday. But some labor unions aren’t so eager, since they think constructing a tunnel might create jobs.
While the pipeline mainly conveys oil to Canada, it does supply about half the propane residents of Michigan’s sparsely populated Upper Peninsula use for heating. FLOW, an environmental group based in Traverse City says that if Line 5 is closed, the demand for propane could be filled by several tanker trucks or one or two rail cars a day, but many residents aren’t convinced.
The pipeline, however, is far from Michigan’s attorney general’s only cause; since she took office two years ago, she has worked non-stop and has been an activist on many fronts.
To an extent, she has modeled herself on Frank Kelley, who as attorney general from 1962 to 1999 invented the modern office, establishing environmental and consumer protection divisions.
Nessel has revitalized those areas, and added more, including an Elder Abuse Task Force and a Conviction Integrity Unit to look into claims of those wrongfully convicted. Her department also conducted a huge investigation into sex abuse allegations against Roman Catholic priests, nine of whom have been charged.
Other than shutting down Line 5, her goals for the second half of her term include “getting all the money I can for the state from pharmaceutical companies and their marketers who have contributed to our epidemic of opioid abuse,” she said.
Attorney General Nessel is not afraid of controversy, to put it mildly. On January 14, her department charged former governor Snyder with two criminal counts of willful neglect of duty for his role in the Flint water crisis; eight other members of his administration were also charged. Asked about this, Nessel said she had completely recused herself from deciding what charges to bring.
“I thought I had to, since I was on the record as saying that Rick Snyder was a soulless monster,” she said.
Michigan’s attorney general also tangled with former President Donald Trump on Twitter more than once, telling him “I wish you loved your country half as much as you love yourself.”
She also has a puckish sense of humor. When news surfaced that new U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene believed the crazy theory that forest fires in California had been started by space lasers controlled by the Rothschild banking family, Nessel, who is Jewish, tweeted that not only did Jews have the patent on the space laser, they also had a patent for everything bagel flavored ice cream. “Some ideas,” she said, “are better than others.”
