Line 5 becomes 'grenade' of controversy in northern Michigan
Apr. 15—MACKINAW CITY — Lisa Paquet knows the pipeline of potential danger and environmental catastrophe is mere steps from her back door and below the perfect outline of cut grass over top that lets everyone know something important is underneath.
When Paquet's family moved here in the late 1980s, Line 5 was nary a thought even though it snaked several feet underground past her property a mile from the Straits of Mackinac.
But after a reported anchor strike of the line in 2018 and the estimate of the four-plus years it would take owner Enbridge to build a tunnel to protect the dual pipeline, the 54-year-old Paquet said she became more sensitive to the pipeline's presence and risk.
"As time goes by and what that project looks like now, it is very scary to be living here," she said.
Unlike Metro Detroit, Line 5 is all the residents in northern Michigan's Mackinaw City, Yoopers in the Upper Peninsula's St. Ignace and the surrounding region talk about. The issue of whether Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's administration is correct to try to shut down the 67-year-old line has created division among neighbors.
The wary include public officials, businesses owners and residents who contend they have a growing fear Line 5 will burst and harm the nearby waters including lakes Michigan and Huron — affecting the rest of the fresh water in the Great Lakes.
Supporters counter the dual pipeline is safe and carries vital crude oil as well as natural gas liquids that provide jobs and energy for the region. In addition, they note former Gov. Rick Snyder negotiated a deal for Enbridge to build a 4-mile tunnel beneath the Straits to house the line, protect against a rupture and guaranteed it will pay the estimated $500 million or more for construction.
"I guess really my wake-up call was maybe 10 years ago when there was just discussion about what to do with Line 5. And then it was damaged by a boat dragging an anchor," Paquet said. "You just really are more in tune with the world around you. I don't know if it's leaking under my property."
There hasn't been a recorded oil leak in the Straits, but Line 5 — which stretches from Superior, Wisconsin through Michigan and under the Straits to Sarnia, Ontario — has leaked underground along the 645-mile route.
Whitmer has given Enbridge a May 12 deadline to close Line 5, but the company is fighting the attempted revocation of its easement in federal court. Canadian officials are also lobbying against the governor's moves, which would shut off a source for the making of propane that is used to heat most of northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula.
Rick Weiss, 68, of St. Ignace, is a self-described environmentalist and conservationist who owns 40 acres of hunting land that Line 5 cuts through. The pipeline, he insists, is safe and will continue to be safe as Enbridge tries to follow through on its agreement to build the tunnel to house it. The same people who are against the pipeline "would have been against the Mackinac Bridge being built," he said.
Taking away Line 5 will hit the UP hard because it will hit supplies of propane to heat homes in the winter and hurt a poor area that desperately needs it, Weiss said.
"Everyone I know that's opposed to the pipeline does not have any science to back up their thinking. It's all emotions," he said. "How bad is it of a stretch for (Enbridge) to keep Line 5 open until the tunnel's built? If it's going to be a short time and there's a light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak, why not build it?"
About fears of Line 5 bursting, Weiss noted the Mackinac Bridge is 63 years old and there are no similar fears about it. "I guess I have faith that this thing will hold together until the tunnel is built," he said.
'A grenade with a pin hold'
Residents have a unique perspective about Line 5 since they live along the pipeline's path as it cuts through St. Ignace in the Upper Peninsula and runs parallel to the Mackinac Bridge at the lake bottom and into Mackinaw City in the northern Lower Peninsula.
Many residents have attended the numerous town hall meetings about Line 5. Some residents say they have been offered money by Enbridge to sell their homes along the pipeline path.
The topic is so controversial that St. Ignace Mayor Connie Litzner declined to comment about Line 5. City Manager Darcy Long predicted very few would talk openly, adding, "It's a grenade with a pin hold."
Edmund Ostman knows full well about the Line 5 controversy.
For years, Ostman, 56, who has farm where he and his wife Angela, 55, care for horses used on nearby Mackinac Island, said he "never noticed" the pipeline was even there. The reminder came years ago when he heard a noise like he had never heard before that made him think "the Russians were coming" — a piercing sound to test the pressure of the pipeline coming from a substation within eyesight.
"You have to do a lot of trusting of them," Ostman said of Enbridge. "And then you get these little indications that somebody else ought to be watching. They said the lifetime of that pipeline was only X amount of years, and we're way over that. That scares me."
The pipeline was built in 1953 and meant to last 50 years.
Chris Shepler, the longtime owner of Shepler's Mackinac Island Ferry and a self-described conservative Republican, shares a similar concern even though he said he's a believer in the fuel delivered by the pipeline.
But everything, he said, "has a life expectancy." He questions why pipeline officials are "pushing that envelope with something that is so valuable as the Great Lakes?"
An oil leak, he said, "is going to go everywhere" and will not be contained.
"We have one third of the world's fresh water supply here in the Great Lakes basin. So people should be worried about this everywhere," Shepler said.
A worst-case scenario spill from Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac would affect more than 400 miles of shoreline in Michigan, Wisconsin and Canada, according to a state-ordered risk analysis released in 2018. Such a spill would release 32,000 to 58,000 barrels of crude oil into the Great Lakes and put 47 wildlife species and 60,000 acres of habitat at risk, according to Michigan Technological University researchers.
Clean-up, liability and restoration costs related to such a spill would add up to nearly $1.9 billion, according to the analysis of 4,300 spill simulations.
The tunnel project is a good idea to protect the lakes, Shepler said, but it could take five to seven years instead of the estimate of four years. "What are we going to do in those five to seven years while still running those gallons through a pipeline that is at its end of life," he added.
Oil leak fears
Patty Peek, 70, is an activist against Line 5 because her Upper Peninsula home in Moran Township next to St. Ignace is a quarter of a mile from Line 5 before it plunges into the Straits just west of the Mackinac Bridge.
Peek said she was home in 2018 when the last anchor strike glanced off the pipeline during blizzard-like conditions. The anchor is believed to have sliced through three American Transmission Company cables, spilling more than 800 gallons of dielectric mineral oil; hit two other Consumers Energy retired lines; and dented Line 5.
What gave it away the seriousness of the situation was the flurry of Enbridge vehicles passing by her house, Peek said.
"I watched it unfold and knew that we were in trouble because we had no idea how much damage had been done to the pipeline. We knew what had been done to the electrical cables," she said. "That's always the biggest fear."
Peek and her husband built their dream home 14 years ago on Boulevard Drive but " we didn't have a clue that there was a pipeline there."
Then there was a spill of about 843,000 gallons of oil into the into the Kalamazoo River in southern Michigan from an Enbridge-owned pipeline in the summer of 2010, one of the largest inland oil spills in American history. "That was when people started to realize there was a pipeline here," she said.
The spill contaminated about 35 miles of the river and surrounding property. The clean-up effort cost more than $1 billion, and Enbridge agreed to pay $177 million for the Marshall spill and one in Illinois as part of a federal settlement. The impact of the spill is felt to this day, with the Michigan's environmental department recently proposing 14 projects aimed at restoring the ecology and public use of the affected area.
Peek helped form the Straits of Mackinac Alliance, a collection of residents who live near Line 5, "to let people understand what it's like to everyday think about having a pipeline leak on our back door."
"Unlike a lot of the other people far away from the Straits, we literally everyday think about that," she said. "You walk out the back door and you can't forget."
The issue should preoccupy Michiganians downstate because this area along the Great Lakes is "where they come to vacation" in places like Traverse City and Petoskey, she said.
"If there's an oil leak, it will be a substantial oil leak and will cause an unbelievable amount of damage," Peek predicted.
Chuck Wheeler, 68, who lives next door to Peek and lived there for 30-plus years, said he worries that the pipeline will "harm our water." But the reality of battling a large company settles in.
"It's part of: You can't fight City Hall," Wheeler said.
It doesn't concern him as much to live so close to the pipeline, he said, adding, "It is what it is. I hope it doesn't turn around on me and do damage to me."
Supporters fight back
Line 5 slices through the U.P.'s Dickinson County as it leaves Wisconsin near where county commissioner Joe Stevens lives. He supports Line 5 but understands how those near the pipeline feel.
"If I lived right next to the Line 5 near the Straits, I would certainly do my homework on it. I understand everybody's concern. No one wants anything bad to happen to the freshwater," Stevens said.
"But the way I look at it, Line 5 has been there for quite a few years. It's been safe. I'm concerned about our constituents up north who have to use propane for heating and the businesses that use it."
With no Line 5 and a tunnel to house it, "the cost of propane is going to go up."
Enbridge paid nearly $3.8 million in taxes in 2020 to northern Michigan counties in the Lower Peninsula and Upper Peninsula where Line 5 runs, company spokesman Michael Barnes said.
"The economic benefits extend beyond well tax dollars. Enbridge provides the propane for both the Upper and Lower Peninsulas that is used to heat thousands of homes and businesses," Barnes said.
"This year's winter storms and temperatures emphasized why Line 5 is vitally important since Michigan didn't skip a beat when it came to meeting its energy needs. Line 5 is a lifeline for the Great Lakes State, day in, day out."
The pursuit of jobs and a new life away from downstate was why Leon and Jessica Ramsey moved to Mackinaw City a year ago. They knew the pipeline was near their home.
Jessica Ramsay, 34, said she leans toward "being cautious when it comes to environmental concerns," especially the quality of the pipeline and age. For years, she had done seasonal jobs in the region in the summer. It was an area her husband also fell in love with.
"It's definitely a concern for me because I would hate to see some type of oil spill or something happen out here," she said. "Our whole economy is based on tourism for the most part. That would be pretty devastating."
For Leon Ramsay, 27, the fear is "we might have an oil spill."
"We have a beautiful lake right here with natural habitat, fishing, that's where we get our water from, good water," he said. "The stuff like that would be ruined. It's really concerning."
The tunnel project doesn't persuade him. "I feel like they're gonna drag that out forever," he said.
But Jodie Buchanan, 52, of Cheboygan, who was doing construction on a home a block away from the Ramsay's, said "Line 5 is fine." He said he doesn't think a new tunnel will be problematic to build.
The whole "concept of moving it (underground) is safer" than moving fuel by train or truck, he said.
"That has potential risk," said Buchanan who has done contract work on Line 5 and projects like the Hoover Dam. "They are going to put this in a tunnel. I think it's a great idea.
He acknowledged critics fear a leak. "I live here. It's beautiful. You wouldn't want oil in that water," Buchanan said. "But having worked in tunnels, having worked on the components, I don't think it poses a threat as it sits."
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