As state leaders were about to convene for the Detroit Regional Chamber's annual conference on Mackinac Island to discuss ways to position Michigan as a national economic leader, a threat loomed from their perch on the Grand Hotel porch. An editorial in Crain's Detroit Business details the danger.
Twin pipelines at the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac carrying nearly 23 million gallons of oil each day have exceeded their original life expectancy.
"It was a different era in 1953 when the 29-inch pipelines were laid. That was before the state of Michigan even issued permits to use the Great Lakes bottomlands. Environmental disasters like the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska and the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico were far in the future. People had more trust in technology and corporations to protect our natural resources. Climate change wasn't a looming global crisis." - Jim Lively, Michigan Land Use Institute
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