News

In response to the news that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved a permit for the Line 5 oil tunnel project today, David Holtz, coalition coordinator for Oil & Water Don’t Mix, issued the following statement.

“The Army Corps’ decision is a thoroughly flawed product of a rushed process driven by the Trump Administration’s phony ‘national energy emergency.’ It puts Enbridge’s interests ahead of a full examination of the future of Line 5, the protection of the Great Lakes and the treaty rights of Tribal Nations whose homelands and sacred waters would bear the consequences.

“The Michigan Supreme Court has fundamentally changed the legal landscape for this project. The Court threw out the Michigan Public Service Commission’s approval because the state failed to adequately consider the environmental consequences of the tunnel and to fairly compare feasible and prudent alternatives. That means Michigan must start over–not only at the Public Service Commission–but in our view also at the Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, whose approvals were based on the same artificially narrow view of the project.

“A legitimate review must consider the choice the Corps deliberately avoids which is don’t build the tunnel and decommission Line 5. Instead, the Corps defines its ‘No Action Alternative’ to assume that Enbridge simply keeps operating the existing pipelines across the Straits. By constructing the analysis that way, the Corps excludes from serious consideration the alternative of ending Line 5’s operation altogether. That is precisely the kind of incomplete alternatives analysis the Michigan Supreme Court has now rejected under state environmental law.

"The Great Lakes deserve a real alternatives analysis and not a predetermined outcome produced by a manufactured political emergency." - David Holtz, Oil & Water Don't Mix

“What makes this decision even harder to defend is that the Corps itself calls its No Action Alternative the environmentally preferable alternative. The Corps also acknowledges that tunnel construction would cause major, permanent adverse effects to archaeological resources and the Straits of Mackinac Traditional Cultural Landscape, a place of profound cultural and spiritual significance to Anishinaabe peoples. The mitigation proposed by Enbridge cannot fully eliminate those harms. Yet the Corps nevertheless races to approve the project under a made-up ‘emergency’ invented by the Administration to accelerate fossil-fuel projects.

“We stand with the Tribal Nations that have opposed this deeply flawed process and insisted that their treaty rights and the sacred character of the Straits be respected. The Michigan Supreme Court has made clear that Michigan cannot simply rubber-stamp a tunnel by pretending the only choices are a tunnel or continued operation of the existing pipelines. The state must undertake a complete, lawful review that includes the consequences of Line 5’s continued operation and the alternative of no tunnel and decommissioning Line 5.

“Until the MPSC and EGLE complete that new review, we believe there is no lawful or defensible basis for the Army Corps to issue or rely upon a federal permit for this project. The Great Lakes deserve a real alternatives analysis and not a predetermined outcome produced by a manufactured political emergency.”