An oil pipeline spanning the Straits of Mackinac continues to cause concern among many groups in Michigan.
Enbridge’s Line 5 is more than 60-years-old – and critics say it needs to be replaced or removed.
Now environmental leaders are worried the pipeline could one day carry heavy crude oils – like tar sands – into the Great Lakes region.
That's a future they want to avoid.
Heavy oils sink
Light oils float.
You can skim them off the surface or vacuum them up if a spill happens. It’s still very tough to do; but heavy oils – like tar sands – are even more difficult to remove from water.
“Early on it’s going to behave like a standard oil. It’s going to float and you can recover a quantity of it while it’s floating," says Jerry Popiel.
He's an advisor in the U.S. Coast Guard’s Great Lakes district.
He says when companies transport heavy oils through pipelines, they dilute the stuff with chemicals to make it lighter. But after a while, those chemicals disappear.
“As those diluents evaporate you get a heavier oil that’s going to sink," Popiel says.
A spill of heavy oil can be disastrous, coating the bottom of rivers and lakes – and preventing most clean up techniques. Enbridge is still trying to clean up a 2010 spill of nearly 1 million gallons of heavy oil into the Kalamazoo River watershed.
And the U.S. Coast Guard has admitted it isn’t prepared to respond adequately to a spill of heavy oils in open water – like at the Straits of Mackinac. That all came out in a Detroit Free Press story last week.
Jerry Popiel says equipment used to clean up heavy oils is still emerging.
“There is some equipment out there," Popiel says. "It is typically a remotely operated vehicle, with divers and things like that. So it exists but there’s not as much of it number one, as opposed to other kinds of traditional oil spill equipment.”
Oil spill exercise
Responders practiced oil recovery techniques at a simulated oil spill in Indian River on Wednesday.
Men fed boom into the water from boats, which is a kind of long inflatable tube used to contain oil spilled into water. The simulation involved a spill of nearly 250,000 gallons of imaginary light oil – the kind that floats.
Enbridge insists that they have no plans to carry heavy oils through the area now or in the future.
“In fact, Line 5 recently went through some upgrades over the past couple of years," Enbridge spokesperson Jason Manshum says.
"And that’s based on the need from refiners to get additional light crude oil and natural gas liquids into this region."
Uncertain future?
Line 5 has never carried heavy oils before, according to Manshum. And environmental groups want it to stay that way.
Grenetta Thomassey is program director at Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council. She’s worried that Enbridge could change its mind some time in the future about heavy oil and Line 5 – as the business climate evolves.
“There is no prohibition of them doing that and they are going to respond to market demands," Thomassey says. "And so if they have enough market pressure I would imagine that that decision could change.”
If Enbridge did change its mind – Manshum says they wouldn’t need permission from any regulators to do it.
But Enbridge would have to do some work on the line.
“It would involve making changes to pump stations and other facilities," Manshum says. "It’s not just finishing one product and starting with an additional product. There would be some work activity that would have to be done before switching the product.”
And Manshum says it would be a public process.
“That would not be a process that is done behind closed doors," Manshum says. "That’d be something that we would make sure we communicate to the general region."
But environmental groups are still worried. Some leaders want guarantees that Enbridge won’t put heavy oils through Line 5 ever.
“It would be nice to have a little more solid assurances along those lines," Grenetta Thomassey says.
Others are considering ways to ban Enbridge from even having the option. They’re hoping the original agreement between Enbridge and the state – allowing the company to operate the pipeline – could provide some legal footing.