Posted Draft EIS Comments

To be clear, the “emergency” Donald Trump has declared is nothing more than a self serving and self contrived mechanism to enrich himself and his cronies at the expense ofd the American tax payer. Regardless of the non-impending and non-existent energy emergency, we can have all the energy we want but if we don’t have clean water to drink and harvest food from we don’t need any energy. The Great Lakes are the backbone of Michigans tourism economy. NO ONE will come to a gas and oil polluted glacial basin. While there will be deleterious environmental affects to the bottom lands of the “straits of Mackinac” as well as the terminal ends of the proposed tunnel, the real issue here is that we are playing with fire. It is not an issue of “IF” but “when” we will suffer a catastrophe that will undoubtedly scar our region and its people forever. The USA has produced and refined more petroleum in the last 2 years than ever in its history. We do not need this pipeline for our survival, we do NEED FRESH WATER, food, and clean air. It is time to push aside corporate greed and realize the need to protect what brought us all here (To the Great Lakes Basin) in the first place.

This study did not take into account the possibility of the tunnel as a “stranded asset”. The financial viability or term of this project is not in the original scoping and is a significant deficit to the overall study. Canadians are now stepping up plans for an alternative to Line 5 called Energy East. The liklihood of this alternative increased with the new emphasis on Canadian sovereignty
This study does not prove the viability of this often-changed tunnel plan. If this boring happens and the machine is stranded what is the exit plan? Who determines the solution?
Lastly, the claims of indigenous tribes to treaty rights is ignored – once again. If this were a US Corporation, say, Exxon Mobil as an example, you would be honoring their contract rights. In this instance you are choosing the contract rights of a Canadian corporation, Enbridge, over the US Treaty rights of first people.
This is aflawed process and should be completed before it is approved.

I have never heard any comments about attaching the pipeline to the underside of the Mackinaw Bridge. It would then be below traffic and above shipping. The pipeline would be easily accessible for inspection and maintenance/repairs and away from the water and possible damage caused by ships. The bridge is already there. The cost of building it under the bridge surely would be a lower and faster than a tunnel.

I am very concerned about the proposed 3.6 mile tunnel under the straits of Mackinaw to house a new segment of line 5. The drilling will potentially release contaminated substances, lower lake levels &
effect lake levels & animal habitats.

This is a dangerous proposal for our number 1 source of fresh water to our environment.

Please review this proposal & act for the safety of wildlife, our precious lakes & economy!

It is crazy to put an oil pipeline through the fresh water of the Great Lakes.

The great lakes account for 21% of the worlds surface fresh water source that provides drinking water to approximately 28 million Americans and Canadians. Lake Michigan, Huron, and Superior account for 77,111 square miles of fresh water that brings in approximately $52.23 billion dollars annually from tourism and fishing alone. To safe guard Michigan and the Great Lakes economy and health the dual pipeline & line 5 should be safely decommissioned. It is 22 years past it’s life expectancy. Line 5 has leaked 33 times over that last 72 years. The lower portion also crosses over 400 water bodies that mostly empty into the Great Lakes.
I am very concerned about the intake structure that would be using the lake water for construction and the two outfalls that would discharge “treated construction process water into the Straits” that would be happening for 3-4 years to build the tunnel.
Decommissioning line 5 would create more jobs than building a tunnel. There are also cases and judgements for the removal of line 5. There is no point in approving a tunnel if parts of the line has been ordered to be removed.
Wisconsin Bad River Band trespass action, currently in 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, found Enbridge has been trespassing since 2013 easements expired and was ordered to remove by June 2026. Judge james Jamo Ingham County considering a challenge to 1953 easement permitting line 5 in the MI owned bottomlands. Parties had failed to consider public trust doctrine which requires finding state lands will not be impaired for use by future generations of MI’s seeking order finding the easement null & void from it’s inception.
Track record of the Kalamazoo River oil spill of 7/25/2010 from Enbridge’s Line 6B pipeline ruptured releasing more than 840,000 gallons of crude oil, taking 17 hours to realize this was occurring. Or the June 2020 line 5 was shut down temporarily and Enbridge did not notify the state officials about the damage.
There should NOT be any toxic potential near water, especially the 2nd largest lake in the world!

I do NOT SUPPORT the Line 5 Tunnel Project proposed by Enbridge. Environmental issues are too delicate in the Great Lakes to risk an oil leak into such large and pristine waters. Enbridge has had oil leakages at other locations in their pipelines which were in land-buried sites. Such sites are easier to contain and clean up. Even then, they were slow to admit to such situations, or alleviate the problems, or to clean-up quickly. However, any failure in this Line 5 Tunnel Project under the Mackinac Straits would be difficult, if not impossible, to service or clean up and would spread oil across the most beautiful area of our state. It would threaten the fishing and tourist industries and would soil beautiful beaches for years to come. Enbridge should be able to find an overland pathway for their pipeline that can avoid this delicate and beautiful area. I sincerely hope that you will reconsider this project and find another pathway.

On table 4.8-1 on page 4-93, the section on karst conditions indicates there will be “thorough site investigations to investigate geological conditions prior to construction.” It seems like now is the perfect opportunity to conduct such evaluations that assess the environmental impact of such a project. The way I’m reading the EIS, it seems like it says the karst features don’t exist now, although they could if the project starts and we can also find out beforehand, but we didn’t. That doesn’t inspire confidence.

Sunday, June 29, 2025

Line 5 Tunnel EIS
16501 Shady Grove Road
P.O. Box 10178
Gaithersburg, MD 20898

Subject: Stop Enbridge reroute project and shut down Line 5 — Line 5 Tunnel Project Draft Environmental Impact Statement

To USACE Chief of Engineers and Commanding General Lieutenant General William H. Graham, Jr., USACE Great Lakes and Ohio River Division Commanding General Major General Mark C. Quander, and USACE Detroit District Lieutenant Colonel Wallace W. Bandeff:

I’m writing about the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Enbridge’s proposed Line 5 tunnel project. Given the concerns this project poses, the Corps should ultimately reject this project and work to shut down Line 5.

“As we peer into society’s future, we—you and I, and our government—must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower

Approving this project would needlessly jeopardize Tribal rights, irreplaceable watersheds, communities across the Great Lakes region, and the broader global community through the impacts of climate change just to maximize the profits of a multibillion-dollar oil conglomerate.

A federal judge has found that Line 5 has been illegally trespassing on the Bad River Band reservation since 2013 and ordered a shut down by June of 2026. This decision must be acknowledged in the Corps’ analysis of the public interest and the purpose and need of the project. Shutting down Line 5 is a reasonable alternative to permitting the re-route, and the Corps cannot ignore information that supports a shut down.

“Our duty to the whole, including to the unborn generations, bids us to restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wildlife and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose and method.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

Enbridge’s track record indicates that they cannot be trusted. Their construction of Line 3 in Minnesota caused enormous damage through frac-outs and aquifer breaches, which caused nearly 300 million gallons of groundwater to flow to the surface, incurring fines and a criminal charge for Enbridge. They have proposed the same process for the reroute, and we cannot risk the damage that will likely occur to safe drinking water and water-dependent ecosystems.

The oil Line 5 carries already exacerbates the climate crisis, causing untold damage.

“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Given these concerns, I urge you to stop this project and decommission Line 5.

Thank you for your consideration of my comments. Please do NOT add my name to your mailing list. I will learn about future developments on this issue from other sources.

Sincerely,
Christopher Lish
San Rafael, CA

Dear Leaders and Staff at United States Army Corps of Engineers:

The Enbridge corporation has never filled me with confidence. Neither has their subsidiary that is now aggressively pushing for a tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac. I will tell you why:

**Enbridge has done a vastly insufficient number of rock core samples along the projected route for their tunnel. The core samples were shallow. The industry standard is to do a core sample every 50 to 200 feet. By its own report, Enbridge did not do that. Even Enbridge had to admit that their core samples found 25% of the rock beneath the Straits to be very poor (0 on a scale of 0 – 100) and another 25% to be poor (<25 on a scale of 0 – 100). Their personnel are taking significant shortcuts and hoping naively for the best.

**It was an undetected methane leak that caused the massive explosion beneath the Lake Huron bed in 1971 that killed 22 skilled workers. Methane has been detected in groundwater in the Straits region; Enbridge has chosen to not recognize that.

**Enbridge has disregarded the original plan by Dynamic Risk, a company they hired in Calgary. The Dynamic Risk plan requires the tunnel to have a sealed annulus. Enbridge independently and significantly modified what the Dynamic Risk company proposed and now wants to completely skip the cement, have an air space and make the diameter much bigger at 21 feet. Neither Enbridge nor Dynamic Risk have tunnel engineers on staff. From what I’ve heard in Marquette, they’ve even offered to the company “Peninsula Fiber Network” the option of running their fiber-optics through the tunnel. It’s anyone’s guess who else they are inviting to share costs and space with them. Not very bright.

**Enbridge contractors severely damaged their own pipeline supports in 2019 but failed to detect it until 2020. When Line 6B spilled into the Talmadge Creek and thus into the Kalamazoo River in 2010, the controllers in Calgary, Alberta were clueless – the company shows repeatedly that it doesn’t know how to handle emergencies. Just a couple weeks before the Kalamazoo area spill, Enbridge executives testifying before Congress insisted that they would know within 10 minutes if a spill had occurred and would shut it down immediately. What actually happened is that it ran for 17+ hours and it wasn’t until someone near Marshall, Michigan called Calgary and told them their pipeline was leaking that the controllers shut it down.

**Enbridge has no fire plan for this tunnel. Their stated plan is to “seal both ends” and “let it burn itself out.” They give no thought to the damage and destruction this would cause to the lakebed and quite potentially the water. So reckless. Also, a total disregard for the fishing rights of the state’s tribes.

**If Enbridge was hiring the same engineers who built the Eurostar Chunnel beneath the English Channel, I would be confident in the plan. But with the companies Enbridge has hired to drill and explode indeterminate rock geology under 295 feet of water, I am not confident. They have settled on two companies without proven safety records at completing an oil tunnel. There is a reason 99% of the world’s oil tunnels are not flowing through tunnels – the risk is too great.

**Enbridge uses the scare tactic of telling Michiganders that we can’t do without Line 5 to heat our homes in the winter. Trust me – we don’t need it. Upper Peninsula propane providers care about their local customers and have contingency plans in place. Ferrellgas has already assured their customers of this fact. In fact, if the Enbridge Corporation were truly interested in supplying U.P. residents, they could send the required amount to their facility in Rapid River near Escanaba, Michigan – no more, no less. This would be only 1300 barrels per day.

**This tunnel project has not undergone a full environmental review, including its impacts on climate and public health. The risks are too high. I ask that you pause the fast-tracking of this project and require Enbridge to prove within a shadow of a doubt that they know what they are doing. The risks otherwise are too great!

I am a concerned citizen of Michigan and value the Great Lakes and Straits of Mackinac far too much to allow preventable damage to occur. I ask that you deny the Enbridge plan.

Thank you for your time,
Jeanne Sekely
Marquette