Michigan moves forward on Great Lakes pipeline tunnel project despite environmental concerns
On Friday the Michigan Public Service Commission approved a permit for Enbridge Energy’s Great Lakes Tunnel Project for the Line 5 oil pipeline, despite concerns from indigenous tribes and environmental groups.
The $500 million project would replace the Canadian energy company’s existing Line 5 pipeline at the Straits of Mackinac with an underground pipeline tunnel.
The 70-year-old pipeline, which runs 645 miles from Superior, Wisconsin, to Sarnia, Ontario, diverges into two pipes as it crosses the four mile long channel that connects Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. Enbridge’s proposed project would replace these pipes with a single pipeline housed within a tunnel bored 100 feet beneath the lakebed.
In a statement released by the commission, it “determined there is a public need for the replacement section of Line 5 and the products it carries,” before continuing that “there are no feasible and prudent alternatives to the replacement project” offered by Enbridge.
The project still needs a permit approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before construction can begin. The Corps is currently conducting a review of the potential environmental impact of the tunnel project, which is expected to be released in 2025. A permit decision from the Corps is anticipated in 2026.
The commission approved the permit with conditions, including that prior to the tunnel’s construction Enbridge must submit a detailed risk management plan to the State of Michigan.
“Through the Great Lakes Tunnel Project, Enbridge is reimagining infrastructure and energy delivery to Michigan and the region,” reads a statement from Enbridge released by Ryan Duffy, a communications strategist for the company. “The decision by the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) is a major step forward in making the Great Lakes Tunnel Project a reality, protecting the Great Lakes and securing the vital energy people in Michigan and surrounding region rely on every day.”
Enbridge first filed the permit application in 2020, to which the public service commission determined the application to be a contested case and allowed other parties, including multiple indigenous communities and environmental groups, to intervene.
“Today’s decision is another notch in a long history of ignoring the rights of Tribal Nations,” said Whitney Gravelle, the president of the Bay Mills Indian Community. “We must act now to protect the peoples of the Great Lakes from an oil spill, to lead our communities out of the fossil fuel era, and to preserve the shared lands and waters in Michigan for all of us.”
Earlier this year, the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Rights called on Canada to “re-examine its support” for the pipeline, saying it “presents a real and credible threat to the treaty-protected fishing rights of Indigenous Peoples in the United States and Canada.” The forum recommended that the U.S. and Canada decommission the pipeline.
After the Michigan Public Service Commission’s permit approval on Friday, Christopher Clark, a senior attorney with Earthjustice, echoed the forum’s sentiments that the pipeline is an existential threat for tribal communities within the Great Lakes region:
“Today’s decision ignores the concerns of tribal communities in favor of the profit of a fossil fuel company,” Clark said in a written statement. “The evidence before the Commission demonstrated that the proposed tunnel would put the Great Lakes region at serious risk and profoundly endanger the identity and lifeways of the Bay Mills Indian Community, a sovereign Tribal Nation whose relationship to these waters pre-exists the United States. We will use every open avenue to shut down Line 5 in order to avert an environmental catastrophe and slow the unthinkable impacts of climate change.”
In 2014, a researcher at the University of Michigan described the Straits of Mackinac as the “worst possible place for an oil spill in the Great Lakes,” as the channels strong currents would quickly contaminate shorelines in lakes Michigan and Huron in the event of a spill.
Since 1953, Line 5 has had at least 33 spills and released 1.3 million gallons of oil across its 645-mile system, according to the National Wildlife Federation.
Furthermore, Enbridge is responsible for what could very well be the worst in-land oil spill in U.S. history when their Line 6B pipeline ruptured near Marshall, Michigan, and leaked over 843,000 gallons of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River in July 2010. A federal report concluded that this oil spill “was not discovered or addressed for over 17 hours,” and that during this time period “Enbridge twice pumped additional oil (81 percent of the total release) into Line 6B during two startups.”
In June, a federal judge ordered that Enbridge has three years to shut down a portion of Line 5 in Wisconsin that crosses reservation land of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, due to concerns that it could rupture. The judge also ordered the energy company to pay the tribe more than $5 million for trespassing.