Posted Draft EIS Comments

Greetings,
I am writing to express my concern about the Line 5 tunnel in the straits of Mackinac.

I believe the risk to the Great Lakes ecosystem and our drinking water is too high. I admit to being a fossil fuel user— even though we have had an EV for 2 years. But we need to invest in charging stations— not oil— for our infrastructure.

Michigan residents are not obligated to provide an economic gift to any company let alone a Canadian company.
Climate change requires that we help people move to renewable energy sources — not invest in outmoded ones.

I have recently learned that the rock quality is very poor in portions of the route— a verifiable fact by the USACE. Please address this issue carefully and publicly.

Enbridge has gotten many free bonus years of operation even after Gov Whitmer called for the line’s closure— and many more free years of access prior to that. The line is living on borrowed time and the folly of a tunnel may just be a very expensive ploy to extend the $2M per day Enbridge earns operating the route. At $2M per day, the cost to draw up plans, rent expensive equipment and pay lawyers can just be chalked up to operational costs.

Alternatives (of sort):
1. To see if Enbridge truly intends to make a tunnel in a timely manner, require that the line be shut down during the decision making period and during the entire construction process.

2. If Enbridge and USACE truly care about the safety of the Great Lakes, require that the pipeline AND tunnel be shut down during severe weather and the entire winter season when access to a leak or spill would be difficult, dangerous or impossible due to waves and ice cover.

We owe nothing to Enbridge. If the tunnel is going to be approved, then this is the only opportunity to make Enbridge agree to strict safety standards such as closing during severe weather. Don’t give away our beloved water quality without the highest level of environmental accountability, transparency and financial assurances for prevention and potential disaster remediation.
Thank you,
Amy Pflughoeft
Traverse City, Michigan

Please correct the EIS to reflect the danger to the most precious freshwater resource in the world. The Line 5 tunnel is not a good alternative to allow petrochemicals to flow near the Great Lakes. Brian O’Mara, a tunnel engineer with decades of experience notes that the rock that is being proposed for the tunnel to go through has extremely poor for tunneling. The rock would act more like gravel than a solid substrate that would be consistent for a tunnel. This factor alone makes the tunnel dangerous to the environment it is passing through and potentially could contaminate Michigan’s greatest resource and symbol, the largest freshwater body in the world, the Great Lakes.

I encourage the Army Corps of Engineers to reject the proposed tunnel.

Sincerely,
Michael DeVries
Traverse City, MI

This tunnel is a huge waste to resources and is risky due to the poor geological conditions. We shouldn’t be risking the safety of our incredible water resource here. It’s gonna become a stranded asset because it’s used to transport, fossil fuel that we are actively transitioning away from. It doesn’t make any sense to invest in something that we are trying to avoid at the great risk that this poses on our natural environment and climate

This proposal has been very poorly vetted. Tunnel experts are appalled by it. Tunnel safety is one of the most urgent concerns raised by them. Enbridge’s assumptions in their engineering report which supported the tunnel assumed very good rock conditions, minimal groundwater inflow, no toxic gasses or methane, and most importantly that the annulus will be totally willed with concrete. None of these conditions are true. Enbridge did not adequately sample the rock — not doing enough borings, not going deeply enough and not sampling where they should have. The rock quality in their public report is extremely poor to very poor quality. Please do not permit this risky project to proceed.

This tunnel is a disaster waiting to happen-disrupting our Great Lakes environment which is vital to all of Michigan for a pipeline that is going from Canada to Canada is all about money – it goes against indigenous rights, the awfulness of oil invading our beaches and water that is vital to myself where I live on Lake Michigan – this tunnel needs to be shut down! Not start construction! Do not approve this!

The environmental impact report is dire, in spite of the fact that the testing not even met minimum standards. Please don’t allow this project to go forward. So much damage will occur for the benefit of the few.

This comment is in support of the Line 5 tunnel. For those who are opposing, do you know the real reason? Sometimes people jump on board for the wrong reasons, only hearing one side of the story. This project has been researched and thought about objectively through all angles to support thousands of residents. This is the best solution environmentally and economically. The projected route is using state of the art technologies that will ensure a safer and well contained construction. Please think about the people that will be affected if this project doesn’t allow the fuels needed to sustain. Thank you.

Michigan Lakes and Streams Association has been working inland with waterfront property residents since 1961. We are aware of many threats and issues that all our freshwater faces, including those that stem from issues in the Great Lakes. Any small slip-up with the Line 5 Tunnel or pipeline that drives oil through our freshwater is game over. We cannot afford to allow oil to pollute our fresh water here in any part of the Great Lakes. So many people depend on drinking water from Lake Michigan. We have done so much work to rehabilitate Lake Michigan from past mistakes; we need to stop the transport of oil through the Great Lakes watershed altogether.

For the safety of the largest source of freshwater in the US, we must Shut down Enbridge’s Line 5 tar sands pipeline. Both the costruction process and the product would have detrimental impacts to the surrounding area, as noted in the Environmental Impact Statement Executive Summary. This pipeline is 70 years old. A catastrophic spill will happen, and when it does, will destroy ecosystems and lives of millions of people. A Line 5 rupture would impact 700 miles of Great Lakes shoreline, take years to clean up, and would devastate our Great Lakes economy, putting 214,000 Michigan tourism jobs at risk. The Great Lakes are 20% of the world’s freshwater — we can’t afford to contaminate them with oil. Building out fossil fuel projects is also bad for the economy. The clean energy transition is ramping up, and funneling more money into oil that may become obsolete in the next decade is a bad investment. Additionally, an inevitable oil spill will take millions of dollars to clean up. Line 5 is also facing numerous legal challenges, including a federal judge ordering Enbridge to remove the pipeline from the Reservation of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Bad River’s lands by June 2026. The pipeline is still operating illegally. Shutting down Line 5 would have little impact on gas prices for consumers, as Enbridge’s own expert admitted at trial that an immediate shutdown of Line 5 would, at most, lead to a one penny increase in the price of a gallon of gasoline in Wisconsin. There are numerous safer alternatives for transporting crude oil and propane to the Line 5 delivery area. It makes most sense, financially, ethically, environmentally — to stop investing more money into an environmental catastrophe waiting to happen, and instead work towards building out clean energy, such as wind turbines and solar. The benefits of shutting down line 5 far outweigh any benefits it may propose. In a time where climate change is already claiming millions of lives, we must listen to science and prevent carbon emissions and contamination wherever possible. I am a lifelong resident of Michigan, who studied environmental sustainability at Grand Valley; Great Lakes are are precious. We must protect them to survive.

I urge the USACE to move forward with permitting construction of the Great Lakes Tunnel.
It’s clear from the Draft EIS that the significant, long term benefits of the Great Lakes Tunnel outweigh the short-term and manageable disruption to the environment in the construction area.
Tunnels are common and are proven infrastructure that many of us use every day. The Great Lakes Tunnel will be built safely, and what’s more, it will make an already safe Line 5 pipeline even safer by getting a portion of the line out of the water and into a tunnel deep below the lakebed.
The Great Lakes Tunnel energy infrastructure project was approved by the Michigan legislature and signed by the governor in 2018. Construction of the Tunnel is a matter of public law.
State experts have concluded that the risk of a spill into the straits from the Tunnel is “virtually zero.” Line 5 delivers up to 23 million gallons per day of the fuel Michigan and surroundingstates use to gas up their cars, power their equipment at work, and create jobs.
I ask you to move forward imediately with permitting the Line 5 tunnel for construction.