Tornado Alley (PROG)

[arizona1]

Oh yeah! Another Rick Snyder F*up!

Last week, 550 gallons of coolant containing the carcinogenic solvent benzene were released into Lake Michigan from an electrical transmission cable running under the Straits of Mackinac. It happened because a ship went through the Straits dragging its anchor.

Enbridge Energy clearly had an “oh shit!” moment since the twin gas pipelines they own that run under the Straits were just a few hundred yards away. Sure enough, after an inspection, they found three dents in the two pipelines which carry nearly 1 million gallons of petroleum per hour. The pipelines, part of Enbridge’s Line 5, are 65 years old.

As I wrote in 2015, it doesn’t take much imagination to understand the utter catastrophe that would result if this pipeline, like the Enbridge pipeline that dumped over a million gallons of tar sands crude into the Kalamazoo River in 2010, were to rupture. Imagine the scenario of this happening in February when the Straits of Mackinac are covered in eight feet of solid ice and when the only ship traffic is through a narrow channel created by a Great Lakes icebreaker. It’s no wonder that University of Michigan researchers called the Straits “the worst possible place for an oil spill in the Great Lakes.”

It’s worth noting that the Line 6B spill cost well over $1,000,000,000 (yes, that’s a BILLION dollars) to clean up. [...]

In response, Gov. Rick Snyder quickly issued a sternly-worded press release “demanding that its own experts verify” Enbridge’s contention that all is well and that there is nothing to see here. He also asks could they please hurry up with the study that he “demanded” last fall from Enbridge investigating other alternatives to Line 5.
http://www.eclectablog.com/2018/04/after-environmental-catastrophe-near-miss-with-enbridges-line-5-pipeline-under-lake-michigan-gov-snyder-issues-sternly-worded-press-release.html