2017-Dec-10
Great Lakes Underwater Pipelines
Water Watch
Over the past three years, the Michigan Government has relied on a task force and then an advisory board to study the risks of and alternatives to operating two 64-year-old oil pipelines in the Straits of Mackinaw. Just as the studies are nearing completion — the Governor of Michigan has signed an agreement that allows Enbridge Energy’s decaying Line 5 oil pipelines to occupy the publicly owned lakebed at the Mackinac Straits indefinitely. Their solution is to build a tunnel to continue to transport oil through the Great Lakes.
Allowing Enbridge to tunnel under the Great Lakes also could unleash a gusher of interest by other oil and gas pipeline companies that could assert — under the North American Free Trade Agreement — their right to bore underneath the Great Lakes too.
