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Add your name to these public comments to be submitted to Michigan state agencies by signing this petition.

PLEASE NOTE! The State of Michigan has closed the comment period. You may still sign the petition here, but the State of Michigan will not recieve your comment.

OWDMTake Action Now

Last June, the preliminary Line 5 Alternatives Study was released, and more than 23,000 people submitted their comment calling for the shutdown of Line 5 as the only alternative that will truly protect the Great Lakes from an oil spill. The revised and final Alternatives Study has just been released, which has triggered a second comment period that is now open.

Prevent a Catastrophic Great Lakes Oil Spill

The deadline for public comments is December 22, 2017, so please sign on and submit your comment today via this online form. Let's prevent a devastating oil spill in the Straits of Mackinac.

To the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, Michigan Agency for Energy, Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Michigan Governor, Michigan Attorney General, and Michigan Pipeline Safety Advisory Board:

I am writing to submit my official comment in response to the State of Michigan’s Line 5 final alternatives analysis dated October 26 and released on November 20. I am deeply disappointed in this final analysis. A draft alternatives report released in June was riddled with errors and omissions, and the final report contains most of the same failures.

This report fails to meet its overall purpose of “providing the State of Michigan and other interested parties with an independent, comprehensive analysis of alternatives to the existing Straits Pipelines, and the extent to which each alternative promotes the public health, safety, and welfare and protects the public trust resources of the Great Lakes.”

It lacks credibility because its author is Dynamic Risk, a firm with ties to Enbridge, the Canadian energy transport company that owns Line 5. Even worse, it absurdly underestimates the impact of a spill and ignores a viable alternative to Line 5 – use of existing infrastructure. An independent expert review in December 2015 documented the practicality of this alternative.

Decommissioning Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac is the only alternative that will prevent an oil spill with catastrophic consequences for the Great Lakes and the State of Michigan. Moreover, this final alternative report affirms that decommissioning is a feasible option with zero risks to the Great Lakes and minimal economic impacts to Michigan customers (e.g., two cents more at the gas pump and roughly 10 to 25 cents more for propane in the Upper Peninsula). 
 
It is time for the state to reject the flawed study, exercise its affirmative legal duty as public trustee of the Great Lakes and bottomlands, and shut down Line 5. The state should use that authority to revoke the 1953 easement agreement that Enbridge has consistently violated.

The risk of a spill is too great to allow Line 5 to continue to operate in the Great Lakes. Our state government should not put the Great Lakes, our economy, health, drinking water, fisheries, and way of life at risk from a catastrophic oil spill any longer. In fact, on November 16, the Coast Guard Coast commandant testified again to Congress that his agency is not prepared to clean up a large-scale pipeline oil spill in the Great Lakes.

I urge you to act as public trustees of our waters and bottomlands, enforce the easement in light of Enbridge’s ongoing violations, and begin the process of decommissioning Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac to protect the Great Lakes from a catastrophic oil spill. The State of Michigan has a legal duty to take this enforcement action. Enbridge’s ongoing violations cannot be remedied. It is time for the state to act decisively and with urgency.

Specifically, the report on alternatives to Line 5 in the Mackinac Straits:

  1. Fails to follow the recommendations and standards outlined in the Michigan Petroleum Pipeline Task Force Report, which resulted from a process created by the governor and co-chaired by the attorney general, and therefore cannot be used by the State of Michigan “in making decisions about the future of the Straits Pipelines.”
  2. Neglects to provide the state with an independent, fair analysis of the alternatives to Line 5 as required by the Task Force Report. This final report remains biased toward allowing Line 5 to continue to operate and/or allowing Enbridge to build new oil infrastructure in the Straits of Mackinac and further expand its operations. That bias grows out of past, and potentially future, business relationships between Enbridge and the report’s authors.
  3. Fails to analyze existing pipeline infrastructure as an alternative to Line 5 in the Straits, which the state required Dynamic Risk to analyze, and leaving it out conflicts with Task Force recommendation 3 (b). It is unacceptable that the contractor eliminated this alternative without any analysis. The 1953 easement granted with strict conditions by the state to Enbridge does not guarantee transport of 540,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil and natural gas liquids. In fact, the 1953 MPSC Order states 300,000 bpd, which means Enbridge is currently operating Line 5 at 80 percent over design capacity. 
  4. Fails to analyze new evidence disclosed by Enbridge affecting the pipeline’s integrity, including external corrosion, 48 bare metal spots caused by the installation of screw anchors, compromised cathodic protection, and historic excessive pipeline spans greater than the 75-feet limit (including a 286-foot span that was unsupported for years), as required by the legal operating agreement with the State of Michigan. Dynamic Risk’s rationale, in part, is that "it would be inappropriate to speculate on any of the above aspects of the coating condition."
  5. Fails to consider tribal sovereign treaty rights and feedback on the basis that Dynamic Risk was not a party to tribal and state consultations, which is an unacceptable dismissal of input by a key stakeholder. 
  6. Grossly underestimates the total economic spill costs at between $147 million and $310 million, when Enbridge’s cleanup costs of its 2010 Line 6B pipeline oil spill along a 40-mile stretch of the Kalamazoo River cost more than $1.2 billion.
  7. Overestimates an impact to propane supply, greatly exceeding what independent experts have determined would be necessary to provide the Upper Peninsula’s Rapid River facility with an alternative supply. The flawed report finds that up to 35 railcars per week or 15 truckloads per day would be necessary, while another study found it would take only one railcar or 3 - 4 truckloads per day to replace the Line 5 propane supply to the U.P.
  8. Continues to show an unfair bias towards building a tunneled pipeline in the Mackinac Straits. The report estimates a much lower cost for a tunnel than other estimates for this type of infrastructure; it fails to consider the risk of a spill to the Great Lakes, rivers and streams from other portions of the 64-year-old pipeline if the Straits portion were rebuilt. Dynamic Risk prefers new pipelines, which was evident when the firm aggressively promoted building a tunnel in its proposal to do this report, and its analysis is deeply flawed.

 

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  • John ADAms
    signed 2024-07-04 02:57:31 -0400
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  • Devney Hamilton
    signed 2021-09-11 15:25:19 -0400
    Please shut down Line 5.
  • Ken Thelen
    posted about this on Facebook 2018-01-18 07:06:27 -0500
    JOIN ME and tell the State of Michigan the only acceptable way to protect the Great Lakes is to SHUTDOWN LINE 5.
  • Kenneth Thelen
    signed 2018-01-18 07:04:38 -0500
  • Eowyn Grecco
    signed 2018-01-17 18:58:35 -0500
  • Allison LaPlatt
    signed 2018-01-16 13:05:28 -0500
  • Angela MorenoDobbs
    signed via 2018-01-16 02:51:40 -0500
  • Dolan Cleary
    signed 2018-01-13 00:46:43 -0500
  • Jan Worth
    signed 2018-01-12 12:02:44 -0500
    SHUT DOWN LINE 5.
  • Mary Boyce
    signed 2018-01-12 11:58:11 -0500
    Don’t take any further risk with the Great Lakes. Shut down Line 5. Thank you.
  • Cynthia MacLeod
    signed 2018-01-09 11:02:42 -0500
    The video showing Line 5’s corroded and fragile sections makes shutting the line down immediately imperative.

    Cynthia J MacLeod
  • Sheri LaFrance
    signed via 2018-01-09 10:38:08 -0500
  • Diane Meyer
    signed 2018-01-05 11:54:43 -0500
    As a U.P. resident who would experience immediate and potentially devastating consequences if Line 5 failed, I urge you to reject this very flawed study and shut down the pipeline. Our Great Lakes are one of the largest clean fresh water supplies in the world…… let’s not risk contaminating them with oil and chemicals. Please, please replace this pipeline with a safer, newer, reliable system. I realize our world operates on fossil fuels, and we need such fuels….. but let’s think wisely how we move the petroleum around…..
  • Gary Swanson
    signed 2018-01-04 20:23:39 -0500
  • Jackie Schmitz
    signed 2018-01-04 14:48:20 -0500
    The Great Lakes is what makes our state so special!
  • Kimberly Seibel
    signed via 2018-01-04 14:14:53 -0500
    Kimberly Seibel
  • Martin Ruvalcabaa
    signed 2018-01-04 12:19:36 -0500
    This is our home we have to take care of it.
  • Christopher Riti
    signed 2018-01-04 11:00:26 -0500
    I am consistently amazed that the sensibility of shutting down an aging pipeline well past its useful life and running through some of our most pristine areas is even questioned. But let’s please be reasonable – there is no reason to keep this alive given the constant failures of pipelines, age of this particular pipeline, Enbridge’s history of spills in similar pipelines, and value of the resources that would be poisoned or otherwise despoiled. Thank you for your consideration.
  • Susan Armour Seidman
    signed via 2018-01-01 20:37:33 -0500
  • Nelson Armour
    posted about this on Facebook 2018-01-01 17:48:28 -0500
    JOIN ME and tell the State of Michigan the only acceptable way to protect the Great Lakes is to SHUTDOWN LINE 5.
  • Nelson Armour
    signed 2018-01-01 17:47:44 -0500
  • Kent Newman
    signed 2017-12-31 17:14:51 -0500
    The pipe is too old. A pipe break could cover many miles of beach. Sometimes the waves are well over three miles an hour.
  • Jennie Hoffmann
    signed 2017-12-31 07:15:35 -0500
    The Governor and Attorney General have acted irresponsibly!!! There has been a 5 year long public information gathering and protest to the risky and disturbing Line 5 easement agreement. The process has been ignored with the latest “agreement” with a foreign business without allowing all our efforts to be properly acknowledged. Outrageous! A tunnel or any straits as usual secret agreement is immoral, unethical, and certainly no following the process Gov Snyder always claims to follow. SHAME
  • Justine Smith
    signed 2017-12-30 20:41:53 -0500
    We have to shut down the pipeline to protect the world’s largest bodies of fresh water.
  • James Olson
    signed 2017-12-30 10:51:47 -0500
    Ryan Costello
  • Sandra Quackenbush
    signed 2017-12-30 09:33:05 -0500
    History has shown us time and again that oil pipelines are not foolproof. Operating something so potentially hazardous within the largest supply of freshwater is an injustice to not only the Great Lakes region, but entire world. SHUT DOWN LINE 5
  • Sharon Klotz
    signed 2017-12-28 19:44:08 -0500
  • Robert O. Pritchard
    signed via 2017-12-28 09:45:22 -0500
    IF THE LEGISLATURE AND THE GOVERNOR, AND APPROPRIATE STATE OFFICIALS , DON"T CLOSE DOWN LINE 5, THEN I THINK THERE IS AMPLE CAUSE TO SUE THEM FOR NONFEASANCE AND MISFEASANCE OF OFFICE IN VIEW OF THE OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE PROVING THE DANGER TO THE PUBLIC LANDS, WATER AND PRIVATE PROPERTY AND PROPERTY VALUES AND THE WATER ITSELF. ROP 12.28.17
  • Condy Jenema
    signed 2017-12-27 23:23:31 -0500
    Please take the safety of our water seriously
  • Erin Lareau
    signed 2017-12-27 14:17:56 -0500
    please look out fo the public good

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