This coverage is made possible through a partnership with Grist and Interlochen Public Radio in Northern Michigan.
During a heated public meeting last Friday, Michigan’s top energy regulator granted Canadian company Enbridge Energy a permit to build a new pipeline and tunnel under the environmentally sensitive Straits of Mackinac, in an important – but not final – step into the controversial project’s approval process.
Construction cannot begin unless the US Army Corps of Engineers grants it a federal permit. Before that happens, the Army Corps must release its assessment of the project’s environmental impacts.
The Michigan Public Service Commission’s decision drew strong reactions from opponents and supporters of the tunnel.
Line 5 transports oil and natural gas liquids 645 miles from Superior, Wisconsin, to Sarnia, Ontario. Two pipelines run four miles along the lake bed, between Lakes Huron and Michigan. Enbridge proposes to replace those with a single 30-inch-wide pipeline housed in a concrete tunnel in the bedrock.
The Public Service Commission said on Friday that building the tunnel would meet the public’s energy needs, while protecting that section of the pipeline from damage and preventing leaks.
Opponents called the decision “disastrous”.
The state has been in talks with Enbridge about the tunnel since 2017.
In 2018, an anchor hit the pipeline in the strait, harmful It. Dan Scripps, chairman of the commission, cited that incident as an example of how vulnerable the pipes are, and why it was important to build this tunnel.
“We have a responsibility to approve the infrastructure needed to meet our energy needs, and to take the steps needed to get the current pipelines off the bottom lands,” he said.
Enbridge, which submitted a proposal for the tunnel in 2020, applauded the commission’s decision. Spokesman Ryan Duffy said in an emailed statement Friday that it was a “major step forward in making the Great Lakes Tunnel project a reality.”
State Sen. John Damoose, a Republican from Harbor Springs, were among the lawmakers who cheered the decision; in a news release, he called it a “major development toward energy security in the region” and “great news for residents of northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula.”
But many people are strongly against the tunnel and the pipeline.
The commission said it received more than 23,000 comments before its decision, and people who spoke at Friday’s meeting said granting Enbridge a permit threatens their communities, their health and the environment.
After the decision was announced, project opponents expressed their anger with the commission.
“You were supposed to protect the Great Lakes, protect us,” said Andrea Pierce, a citizen of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians and chair of the Anishinaabek Caucus. “These pipelines and tunnels go through my tribal lands, through my people’s lands, through my community. And I think that’s just reprehensible.”
All 12 federally recognized tribal nations in Michigan oppose Line 5. The Bay Mills Indian Community in the Upper Peninsula has been waging a legal battle to stop the tunnel project for years. quote threats to treaty rights, resources and ways of life.
Bay Mills is contesting a separate tunnel permit from the state’s Environment, Great Lakes and Energy department.
“Today’s decision is another notch in a long history of ignoring the rights of tribal nations,” Bay Mills President Whitney Gravelle said in a statement. “We must act now to protect the people 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 of Michigan for all of us.”
Enbridge pipelines have burst several times. In what was one of the nations worst domestic oil spills, a section of the Line 6B pipeline ruptured and spilled in 2010 more than 840,000 gallons of oil in a tributary of the Kalamazoo River. (The Environmental Protection Agency estimated that 1.2 million liters were recovered from the river in the following years.)
In 2020, Governor Gretchen Whitmer order Enbridge to shut down Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac by the spring of the following year, saying that Enbridge had violated its 1953 easement to operate there and that it threatened the Great Lakes with an oil spill. Enbridge defied that order.
In addition to the threat of a spill, opponents say the project is an enemy in the global fight against climate change.
The 70-year-old pipeline transports more than 22 million liters of oil per day. Opponents of the tunnel project say this permit shows that the state will continue to rely on fossil fuels.
In 2021, the Michigan Public Service Commission agreed consider greenhouse gas emissions when Enbridge’s tunnel proposal is reviewed under the state’s Environmental Protection Act.
It was the first time the commission considered climate impacts under the law when deciding on a project like the pipeline. As part of that process, environmental groups presented expert testimony to the commission.
Peter Erickson, then a director of climate policy at the Stockholm Environment Institute, testified that the construction of the tunnel will result in the release of 27 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually into the atmosphere, compared to a scenario where Line 5 is closed and no tunnel is built.
The commission said last week that it found no viable alternatives to the tunnel project, and that many alternatives “would have a greater environmental impact.”
Commissioner Scripps acknowledged that a transition away from fossil fuels is happening, citing the energy legislation recently signed by Whitmer that requires the state to transition to 100 percent clean energy by 2040. Scripps said the commission meanwhile has a responsibility to build infrastructure approve what is needed to meet the state’s energy needs.
But there is also disagreement about how much Michigan relies on Line 5 for its energy. For example, Enbridge say that the pipeline supplies more than half of Michigan’s propane, and that it is central to energy security in the Upper Peninsula. But environmental groups like the Michigan League of Conservation Voters say there are alternatives. A report released in October by PLG Consulting said that with enough notice of a Line 5 shutdown, the state’s energy markets could adjust without supply shortages or price spikes.
While Friday’s decision by the commission was a big step toward the tunnel’s construction, it is not the last.
Along with a slew of legal challenges, the US Army Corps of Engineers will have to weigh in on its assessment of the project’s environmental impacts. A decision on whether to grant the project a federal permit expect in 2026.
