By developing an underground tunnel, the agricultural gas pipeline, which stretches through the Great Lakes Canal, can destroy urines and damage the bat habitats, but eliminates the likelihood of the boat anchor, a ruptured line and causing a catastrophic spill, the US Army Corps
The analysis is closer to the housing closer to confirm the tunnel to the 5 line in the Mackinac Strait. The tunnel was offered in 2018, when it cost $ 500 million. USD, but it was shocked by legal challenges. The case quickly watched the project in April after President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to set energy projects to speed up the emergency permits.
The final environmental assessment is expected until the autumn, and we will make the decision to follow later this year. Initially, the agency planned to make a permit decision in 2026. At the beginning of the year.
With this permit, Enbridge will only require the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy Payment before it can start building a tunnel. However, this is far from being given.
Environmentalists pressured the state to deny the permit. Meanwhile, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Gretchen Whitmer, head of government, are trying to win court rulings that will force Enbridge to remove the existing pipeline from the Strait.
Construction can have a large short -term, long -term effect
The analysis notes that the tunnel will eliminate the risks of the boat anchor, ruptured pipeline, and the spill of the strait, which is the main concern of environmentalists. However, construction would have a great influence on everything, starting with rest and wildlife.
Many effects such as noise, Vistas, raised by 400 feet (121 meters) cranes, the humiliating possibilities of the Star Lifting Star Lifting Lifting Lifting Star Lifting Options and Vibrations, which would disrupt the wildlife of the water at the end of the work.
Other effects will last longer, including the loss of wetlands and vegetation on both sides of the Strait connecting Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, and the loss of nearly 300 trees, which the use of northern long ear bat and triangular bats. Reading and excavation can also disrupt or destroy archaeological sites.
Tunnel bend can cause vibrations that could change the geology of the area. In the construction zone, the soil can be contaminated and nearly 200 trucks per day would reduce the roads of the area during the six -year construction period and analysis. Gas mixing with water from the tunnel can cause an explosion, but the analysis notes that Enbridge plans to install fans so that the tunnel can be properly ventilated during excavation.
“Our goal is to have as little traces of the environment as possible,” said Enbridge officials in a statement.
On Friday, the Sierra club announced a statement saying that the tunnel remains an “existential threat.”
“The likelihood of oil spill in the Great Lakes – the most valuable sources of our freshwater resources – increasing if this tunnel is built in the Strait,” the group said. “We can’t drink oil. We can’t fish or swim in oil.”
Julie Goodwin, a senior lawyer with Earthjustice, an environmental law group contrary to the project, said the housing failed to consider the effect of a spill that could still occur on both sides of the Strait or stop the oil flow through the large lakes.
“My main shows are that the Army Corps, which the blind plated, serves the agenda of Enbridge and President Trump,” she said.
The tunnel would protect the part of a line 5 passing through the Strait
Enbridge since 1953 Used the 5 -line pipeline for the transport of green oil and natural gas fluids between superior, Wisconsin and Sarnia, Ontaria.
Anxiety about the rupture of the aging pipeline and causing a potentially disastrous spill of the Strait over the last decade. Those fear intensified in 2018, when the anchor ruined the line.
Enbridge states that the line remains structurally justified, but it entered into an agreement with the then Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s administration in 2018, which requires the company to replace a new section of the line of the line, which is placed in the protective underground tunnel.
Enbridge and Environmentalists in Judicial Fights
Environmentalists, Indian tribes and Democrats fought for many years in court to stop the tunnel and force Enbridge to remove from the Strait. They have been little lucky so far.
The Court of Appeal of Michigan approved the editions of the State Public Services Commission for the tunnel in February. Nessel filed a lawsuit in 2019 to annul the easement that allows the 5 line to run across the Strait. That case is still being investigated. Whitmer canceled the easement in 2020, but in April. Enbridge challenged the decision and the Federal Court of Appeal, ruled that the case could continue.
Another legal struggle for a 5 lines in Wisconsin
About 12 miles (19 kilometers) 5 lines run through a bad river bar in the reservation of the Superior Chippewa Lake North Wisconsin. This tribe 2019 Filed a lawsuit to force Enbridge to remove the line from the booking, claiming that it is prone to spill and easements that allow you to act in 2013. At the end of the reservation.
Enbridge offered a 41 mile (66 kilometers) replacement around the reservation. The tribe filed an action seeking annulment of the project’s state building permits and joined several other groups by disputing permits through the disputed state case proceedings.