The Great Lakes Environmental Law Center has notified a Canadian company it intends to file suit for violations of the Clean Water Act. Enbridge, Inc., based in Calgary, operates the pipeline that ruptured last week spilling oil into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River.
Lawsuit
Nick Schroeck, director of the Environmental Law Center in Detroit, says the reason for a civil suit is to assure the public interest is represented at the table when the company and regulatory agencies begin negotiating fines and costs of the cleanup. Schroeck says in the past state and federal governments haven't always aggressively pursued penalties that the law allows.
"And so we want to insure that the interests of Michigan citizens, folks that recreate along that river that their interest is preserved, and that fines are aggressively pursued, and that the maximum possible fines are assessed under the Clean Water Act."
The federal law allows fines that could exceed $26 million dollars, based on EPA estimates of the amount of oil spilled.
And, if it's proved Enbridge was negligent, ignoring warnings of corrosion in the pipeline for example, the amount of fines may quadruple.
The money would go for continued cleanup and restoration of damaged areas.
EPA: Cleanup Going Well
Meanwhile, last night hundreds of people packed into the muggy auditorium at Marshall High School to hear from government officials about what's being done to clean up nearly a million gallons of crude oil a broken pipeline spilled into the Kalamazoo River. It was the first public forum held by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency since the disaster early last week.
Officials say crews have removed much of the heavy oil from many parts of the river, but that a lot remains along the banks of the river, and in the marsh where the pipeline ruptured near Marshall.
"We're not going to sugar-coat it: that marshy area still looks bad," says Deputy Site Clean-up Manager Mark Durno. "There's going to be a long-term clean-up over in the Marshall area as this response moves forward. We're going to be here for months, not weeks, cleaning this thing up."
Investigation
The investigation into that caused Enbridge Energy's "6B" pipeline to break will also take time, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
"We have an enormous amount of work to do until we can determine the definitive cause of this accident," says Board Spokesman Peter Knudson . "The entire investigation will take about 12-to-18 months to complete.
"But be assured that if we find any safety issues that need to be immediately addressed, we can issue urgent safety recommendations and we have done that in the past."
Knudson says federal investigators are trying to determine when operators at Enbridge discovered the break, and what they did about it.
The company also faces congressional hearings, not to mention a class-action lawsuit filed by an environmental group on behalf of residents affected by the spill.
Battle Creek Democrat Mark Schauer is one of the members of Congress who plan to grill Enbridge officials on Capitol Hill next month.
"I flew over the river today," he said Monday. "There is plenty of petroleum continuing to flow in the Kalamazoo River. So, the cleanup is going better but there's a lot of work to be done. And I think one message the company will hear tonight is that people want to be made whole."
Compensation For Residents
Enbridge Energy officials say the company will pay what they call "legitimate" claims from people affected by the spill.
Gary and Alice Sanders, of Marshall, are among those looking for compensation. The stench of oil forced them out of their home near the Kalamazoo River last Tuesday, and sent Alice Sanders to the emergency room with breathing problems. She and her husband stood near a tent set up by Enbridge outside the high school, waiting to get a reimbursement application.
Gary Sanders says they were generally satisfied with what they heard earlier in the evening from the government:
"They're trying their best," he says. "So, yeah, we're just concerned about our reimbursement, what we get paid back for this happening, and the air quality. And we're on a well system, so we want to make sure our well's going to be okay too."
Complete Cleanup
State officials say water and air quality will be monitored for a long time in the disaster area, but they say municipal water supplies should not be affected.
Although some, like the Sanders, were relatively upbeat, not everyone at the meeting was forgiving. Kalamazoo River Protection Association President Dayle Harrison says Enbridge officials should face criminal charges. He says the area of the Kalamazoo River most heavily polluted by the spill had been under consideration for designation as a "natural river":
"It's some of the most pristine habitat and viable fisheries we have anywhere in the entire river system," he says. "So, for them to have to recover from an oil slick of this magnitude, it pretty much does away with that potential designation."
Harrison says a complete clean-up of the mess is the only thing that will keep the quest for that designation alive. EPA's Mark Durno says that's exactly what his agency has in mind.
"Ultimately our goal would be to remove every drop of oil from the environment," he says. "I don't know if that's realistic but that's the goal."
So far federal officials say they've committed $13 million dollars to cleaning up the Kalamazoo River oil spill. That tab is expected to go much higher. But no matter how much it costs, federal officials say they'll demand that every cent is paid back by the pipeline's owner.
