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we were completely shocked to find out
that there was a pipeline actually lying
at the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac
the iconic image of the Great Lakes in
Michigan almost directly underneath that
there's this ticking time bomb I can't
imagine a worse place for an oil spill
to happen in the Great Lakes the oil
would spread faster further and impact
more miles of shoreline than than any
place else a lot of these reports are
they are very misleading and they are
not entirely accurate the notion that a
company like Enbridge would not maintain
a line is just this is atrocious it's
quite false
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oil pipelines you can't see him but 2.5
million miles of steel spiderwebs its
way across America they've run beneath
our lakes rivers and wetlands and over
18,000 places and you never really hear
about them until they spill
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what we're looking for is if there's any
sheen or any if there was any release at
all that we see it right away in a
machine I'm an Indian River Michigan
where Enbridge a Canadian pipeline
company is running an oil spill response
drill with the US Coast Guard US
Environmental Protection Agency and
local first responders they've invited
press and local stakeholders to get a
glimpse of what a coordinated response
looks like when an oil pipeline ruptures
into a waterway
got a lot of Enbridge staff right here
you've got a couple Coast Guard local
police department local fire department
mixed in
she's got planning operations logistics
as you can see everything is kind of a
really really nice banner printed
professionally very interesting kind of
dog and pony show the point of the drill
was for Enbridge and first responders to
practice better coordination in the
event of a spill with the show of oil
boom in boats doubled as a public
relations event for a company who has a
concerning record of the state while the
world was fixated on bps Deepwater
Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico
Enbridge's line 6b ruptured on July 26
2010 spilling over 800,000 gallons of
oil from the Alberta tar sands into the
Kalamazoo River just outside Marshall
Michigan it would be the largest inland
oil spill in American history they just
declared a state of emergency here in
Calhoun County and I spoke with an
official at the state native it may be
the worst oil spill ever in the Midwest
what they thought was a false alarm
was a six-foot gash horizontal gash in
the pipeline that left this gaping tear
and out of that flowed over 800,000
gallons any Buxbaum is the vice
president of conservation action for the
National Wildlife Federation and has
been tracking Enbridge's activity in the
Midwest even when they put booms up they
finally got booms out there the flow is
so so so great it just blew they were
all right by the booms within just a few
days they all extended 35 miles
downstream and that's where you get
those horrible pictures of oil grasses
beaches on wildlife
line 6b he crosses through the town of
Marshall Michigan at Tallmadge Creek a
wetland that flows into the larger
Kalamazoo River the pipeline break was a
bonafide disaster with cleanup cost and
Enbridge approximately 1.2 billion
dollars and lasted until 2014 if
residents of the Great Lakes region
weren't familiar with Umbridge before
they were now before 2010 I don't think
anybody knew that they were there were
pipelines much less where they were we
were completely shocked to find out that
there was a pipeline actually lying in
the bottom of space of a Knopf Michigan
residents realized that line 6b wasn't
the only pipeline in their backyard
Enbridge has an extensive pipeline
network running through the Great Lakes
region and one pipeline in particular
running through the Great Lakes
themselves line five travels from
superior Wisconsin through the Upper
Peninsula of Michigan and then splits
into two 20 inch pipelines as it crosses
the five-mile wide strait between Lake
Michigan and Lake Huron the twin
pipelines follow the contours of the
lake bottom rich in depths of over 200
feet it's 61 years old it's never been
replaced it's owned and operated by M
bridge which is the same company
responsible for the largest in the oil
spill in history so you've got the
iconic image of the Great Lakes and
right almost directly underneath it
there's this ticking time bomb
this is what an oil spill would look
like in the straits of mackinac the
colored dots show where the oil would
travel within the lakes water tables red
is near surface yellow mid-depth blue
near bottom the oil would travel far
fast and in different directions
already after six days these surface
particles are down heading into roger
city 40 miles away from the Straits dave
swab a research scientist at the
University of Michigan Ann Arbor created
the computer models I met with him to
find out why the streets were especially
vulnerable to an oil spill it's just
this picture where it really spreads out
there I mean you couldn't you couldn't
run enough oil boom across the any of
this and that's a consequence of this
oscillating flow that's so powerful the
amount of water going through that
straight when it's going one direction
or the other at the peak is more than 10
times what goes over Niagara Falls if
only one of the aging pipelines in the
straits of mackinac were to rupture and
Enbridge was able to shut down the
pipeline immediately the best case
scenario would be a 1.5 million gallon
oil spill a single color group
represents that 1.5 million gallons and
how it would move to the streets if it
were released particles that were
released at good depth they're now
almost equally distributed between Lake
Michigan and Lake Huron
after I finished doing the simulations
making the animations I sat down and I
thought well what's the story here what
is this really telling people what's it
telling me and what it told me is that I
can't imagine another place in the Great
Lakes where it would be more devastating
to have an oil spill in terms of the
amount of shoreline that would be
impacted
and the speed that it would be impacted
at
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it's not till you get up to the middle
of the bridge that you realize how big
these links are it looks like a
ocean and all this water is at risk the
Straits of Mackinac people flock here by
the millions each year the pristine
beaches in the Clearwater of the
surrounding counties drive an 800
million dollar-a-year tourist economy
but the iconic bridge in the oil
pipeline nearly beneath it weren't
always here line five was built over 60
years ago which means there aren't a lot
of people alive today who actually
worked on it we tracked down a man by
the name of Bruce Trudgen who spent the
summer of 1953 working on the pipeline
and this is where I spent the summer end
on the end of the causeway sitting here
with my transit turning angles on the
dredges to help them locate where they
were out there to do their dredging that
was not a full-time job I was 21 that
summer I'm probably the youngest living
person still worked on that project that
was it was a big deal up there initially
the plate plane went as far as the
Western interleague superior then they
took it by boat but in 53 they decided
to put a pipeline the rest of the way
which ran across the U P Donna Sarnia
and the problem was getting this oil
across the Straits of Mackinac they
welded the pipes up on the North Shore
put a cable across the bottom of the
Straits with a big winch on the south
shore and he dragged him across and as
they dragged him they welded more of
pipe and so they had these two pipes
four miles long dragged across the
bottom of straits this was five times
longer than had ever been done before
how long is the pipeline supposed to
last at that time they said 50 years
this pipe in the last 50 years so
Enbridge has decided it's
good way past fifty years so they didn't
put it there when they expect these
things they're simply looking for
corrosion they can't see inside and they
can't determine the stress of the pipe
but they can look for how the pipe is
supported the only thing that can weaken
the pipes is corrosion unless you bend
them by not supporting them properly so
with that orange spike there that
indicates below that is where the pipe
is you're playing one on the Southshore
those are all over the state of michigan
that's all you're playing over
talking with Bruce got us worried we
wanted to know more about the condition
of the 62 year old pipelines in the
Straits were they still supported
properly was there any corrosion
I met with Beth Wallace a pipeline
safety advocate she offered to take us
where the lines into the water and tell
us more about their condition we could
find out very little about the pipeline
we just basically knew it was there and
the age wind was as blind mice'
inspected what did what were the results
of that inspection that's basic
information the public should have them
adjust we cannot get we had filed two
foils that were ignored for the large
part the boys were asking for
inspections we know that Enbridge went
down and took footage but they weren't
releasing the footage and we weren't
getting it from the federal agency
finsih finally we decided we're gonna
just dive it and when we got out there
it was shocking National Wildlife
Federation divers captured footage of
what many fear is in the water
broken structural braces
and the pipeline's covered in debris but
as the crew lowered their cameras deeper
than they were able to dive what the
capture was truly worrisome sections of
pipeline completely unsupported at a
depth of over 200 feet
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during the entirety of the dive the team
was watched closely by Enbridge from
above and below according to the
original construction easement issued by
the state of michigan in 1953 and bridge
was to have anchors every 75 feet to
prevent structural stress on the lines
and so this year they just went out and
they put in supports they had to put in
40 some supports in order to come into
compliance for the original easement how
how did they construct this pipeline and
not adhere continue to do maintenance
work add anchors add anchors and then
they still had to add 40 in order to
comply with the original easement and
the state the state basically slapped
him in the hand said just get up to
compliance and that's it it's part of
our ongoing maintenance so this is
planned you know it wasn't anything that
came out of the blue we traveled down to
Marshall the site of the 2010 spill and
the location of Enbridge's headquarters
in Michigan Jason Manchin the company's
public affairs specialist elaborated on
the condition of line 5 in time what
happens is you know with currents
through the Straits near the lake bed it
changes some areas you know might get
washed away so you know when the
pipeline is new of course we didn't have
any spans like that but over time if the
current starts to wash away a segment
and then it's unsupported for a length
greater than 75 feet that's right we now
have to come in and we will brace the
line with these six foot long screws
that go into the lake bottom and
literally anchor it down there and
provide that that support and again if
we need to add more in subsequent years
that's what we'll do but it's again just
it's part of our ongoing maintenance so
is what's your response to organizations
who are taking it into their own hands
to try to give information to the public
a lot of these reports are they are very
misleading and they are not entirely
accurate you know the notion that a
company like Enbridge would not maintain
a line it's just this is atrocious it's
quite false yet according to M bridges
own data there were over 800 spills in
the US and Canada between 1999 and 2010
and over five million gallons of oil
released several of the largest spills
were on images Lakehead system November
1999 Crystal Falls Michigan 226 thousand
gallons spilled July 2002 Cohasset
Minnesota 252 thousand gallons spilled
February 2007 excellent Wisconsin over
two hundred thousand gallons spilled
July 2010 Marshall Michigan over eight
hundred thousand gallons spilled is that
just the cost of doing business as a
pipeline company that oil is going to be
spilled and money needs to be allocated
to environmental remediation of course
we have we have environmental
remediation as a top priority and we
have obviously resources monetary and
personnel in that area but the key to
this is no releases are acceptable to
Enbridge are we there yet no you know
clearly we're not but I can I can assure
you that at the first sign the either
one of those twin pipes in the Straits
of Mackinac would need replacement we
would initiate that that program we
would not wait
but according to federal pipeline
regulations the decision to replace or
remove the line is left solely to
Enbridge there's no federal standard
that sets the level of risk allowed for
pipelines to fail that means that that
each company sets its own risk
parameters how hard to push the when to
do repairs an alarm goes off what to do
about it the federal government has no
standard for how those things have to be
addressed
that's unconscious
in July of 2014 Michigan's newly formed
petroleum pipeline task force concluded
a year-long inquiry into line five in
the release of an 80 page report it
slammed dem bridge for information gaps
and how the company conducts pipeline
integrity inspections and the results of
those inspections
despite recommending a study of what a
worst case scenario spill and the
Straits would cost and ensuring that
emerge has enough insurance to cover
those costs there were no calls from the
state of Michigan to remove the 62 year
old pipeline from the Great Lakes
regulatory efforts continue to focus on
the financial liabilities of petroleum
transport and that furthers the idea
that oil spills are just the cost of
doing business for pipeline operators
meanwhile residents at the Great Lakes
region continue to worry about their
most valuable asset when you talk to
people in this region about a threat to
the Great Lakes they take it personally
they take it like it's a threat to them
in their families there is nothing more
important than the health of the Great
Lakes there's nothing
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you