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During a heated public meeting full of emotional testimony, Michigan’s top energy regulator has granted Enbridge a permit to build a tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac, in an important — but not final — step in the controversial project’s approval process.
The project can’t move forward until the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers releases its findings on the project’s environmental impacts and grants it a federal permit.
And Friday’s decision sparked strong reactions from opponents and supporters of the tunnel.
A CONTROVERSIAL PROJECT
The Line 5 tunnel would replace the two existing pipelines that run 4 miles along the lake bed between lakes Huron and Michigan.
Line 5 carries oil 645 miles from northern Wisconsin to Ontario.
On Friday, the Michigan Public Service Commission said building the tunnel would meet the public need for oil while making that section of the pipeline less vulnerable to leaks.
Opponents called the decision “disastrous.”
The state has been in talks with Enbridge regarding the tunnel since 2017. The Canadian company, which submitted a proposal for the tunnel in 2020, applauded the commission’s decision in a statement on Friday.
Commission Chair Dan Scripps said they found a “public need” for Line 5, and argued that the proposed 30-inch wide pipeline, placed within a concrete tunnel, would be better than the dual pipelines running in the straits.
“We have a responsibility to approve the infrastructure needed to meet our energy needs, and to take steps necessary to get the current pipelines off the bottom lands,” he said.
State Sen. John Damoose (R-Harbor Springs) cheered the decision in a news release, calling it a "major development toward energy security in the region" and "tremendous news for residents of northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula."
But many people strongly oppose the tunnel and the pipeline.
The commission said it received more than 23,000 comments ahead of its decision, and people who spoke during Friday’s meeting said granting Enbridge a permit threatened their communities, their health and the environment.
When Scripps thanked sovereign tribal nations for their input, there was an audible outcry from the room.
After the decision was announced, project opponents voiced their anger with the commission.
“You're 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 are going to go through my tribal lands, through my people’s lands, through my community. And I think that's just reprehensible.”
All 12 tribal nations in Michigan oppose Line 5. The Bay Mills Indian Community in the Upper Peninsula has been leading one legal fight to stop the tunnel project for years, citing threats to treaty rights, resources and ways of life.
Bay Mills is challenging a separate tunnel permit from the state 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 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."
CLIMATE IMPACT
Enbridge pipelines have ruptured multiple times. The worst spill was in 2010, when a section of the Line 6B pipeline burst and 840,000 gallons of oil poured into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River. In 2018, an anchor struck the pipeline in the straits, damaging it.
In 2020, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ordered Enbridge to shut down Line 5’s dual pipelines in the Straits of Mackinac, saying that Enbridge was violating its 1953 easement to operate in the Straits of Mackinac, and that it threatened the Great Lakes with an oil spill.
In addition to the threat of a spill, opponents say the project is a foe in the global fight against climate change.
The 70-year-old pipeline transports more than 22 million gallons 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 Public Service Commission announced that it would consider greenhouse gas emissions when reviewing Enbridge’s tunnel proposal under Michigan’s Environmental Protection Act, which requires the state to determine the environmental impacts of projects like the pipeline.
This was the first time the commission also had to consider climate impacts when making its decision. As part of that process, environmental groups submitted expert testimony to the commission.
Peter Erickson, then a policy director at the Stockholm Environment Institute, said that construction of the tunnel would lead to the release of 27 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually, compared to a scenario where Line 5 was shut down and no tunnel was built.
The law also requires the state to determine if there are any feasible alternatives; the commission said on Friday that it found none.
Commissioner Scripps acknowledged that a transition away from fossil fuels is taking place, mentioning the energy legislation recently signed into law by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, which requires that the state transition to 100% clean energy by 2040. But Scripps said that in the meantime, the state will continue to rely on oil.
While Friday’s decision by the commission was a big step toward the tunnel project’s construction, it’s not the last.
Along with a slew of legal challenges, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will need to weigh in with its determination of the environmental impacts of the project. That draft is expected in the spring of 2025.
Correction: Enbridge's Line 6B pipeline ruptured in a tributary of the Kalamazoo River in 2010, not Line 5.
