As part of Water Week at Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum, we’re exploring some of the complex issues shaping the future of water in Michigan and across the Great Lakes region. We invited Mike Shriberg, PhD, Director of the University of Michigan Water Center and Professor of Practice and Engagement at the School for Environment and Sustainability, to share an update on one of the region’s most consequential and complicated water issues: the ongoing Line 5 saga.

There have been more head spinning turns in the Line 5 saga the past few weeks.  As most readers likely know, Enbridge Energy’s Line 5 carries up to 23 million gallons per day of oil and natural gas liquids approximately 645 from Superior, Wisconsin to Sarnia, Ontario, using Michigan as a shortcut to get mostly Canadian tar sands oil to mostly Canadian and export markets.  Line 5 has been the center of controversy in two key areas – its crossing of the Straits of Mackinac and its traverse through the Bad River Band Reservation in Wisconsin – since the 2010 Enbridge oil spill into the Kalamazoo River on a pipeline that has the same starting and ending point, but takes a southerly route around the Great Lakes. 

In Michigan, Attorney General Dana Nessel and Governor Gretchen Whitmer formally revoked Enbridge’s easement to operate along the bottom of the Mackinac Straits in 2019 (Nessel) and 2021 (Whitmer). Enbridge has refused to shutdown, battling each order in court on both jurisdictional (Enbridge prefers federal courts and Michigan prefers state courts) and substantive (Enbridge does not recognize Michigan’s authority over the pipeline) grounds.  The cases – one of which already made it to the U.S. Supreme Court – continue to play out with no clear end in sight. Governor Whitmer recently proclaimed that she remains committed to following through on her commitment to shutting down Line 5 in the Straits despite the opposition of the U.S. and Canadian federal governments as well as the Enbridge and the fossil fuel industry.  
 

Enbridge’s proposed alternative to the current configuration of Line 5 in the open waters of the Great Lakes is to build a tunnel underneath the Straits.  In the past few weeks, Governor Whitmer approved a key set of environmental permits to allow Enbridge to build the tunnel despite strong opposition from environmental organizations and Michigan’s tribal governments, among others.  Then the Michigan Supreme Court overturned a decision by the Michigan Public Service Commission to approve the Great Lakes tunnel, essentially saying they took too narrow a view of environmental and public trust impacts. This landmark decision has implications not only for Line 5 – it’s hard to see how a tunnel could be allowed under these criteria – but also for many other environmental issues as it strengthened the enforcement of the Michigan Environmental Policy Act. Finally, and unsurprisingly, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a key permit for the construction of the Great Lakes tunnel.  The bottom line is that the future of the building of the Great Lakes tunnel is still in limbo, with two state permits not yet secured and an unclear at best path to securing them.

Meanwhile in Wisconsin, a U.S. Appeals Court upheld the rights of the Bad River Band to remove Line 5 from its reservation but then also allowed Enbridge more time – “as soon as possible” – to reroute the pipeline around the Reservation.  This contradictory ruling – which makes a point of calling out Enbridge’s bad behavior – has led to a focus on Enbridge’s preferred strategy: rerouting around the Reservation although still within the Bad River watershed. This reroute has begun construction, but the Bad River Band and environmental allies sued the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources for allowing it to move forward.  This suit joins other legal challenges to the Wisconsin reroute.
 

Clear as mud? As someone who has directly participated in and analyzed Line 5, every time I think that we’re at the end game (either a shutdown or long-term continuation), more drama and intrigue ensues.  The most recent events appear to put the ultimate fate of Line 5 in even more questionable territory, and almost certainly beyond the terms of Michigan Governor Whitmer and AG Nessel as well as Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers.  As I’ve outlined in other articles, the fate of Line 5 is not only important for the Great Lakes but also now has highs stakes for Indigenous rights, states’ right, the future of fossil fuels, and the strength of water protections.