BAY MILLS – Less than a year after Miller Pipeline trucks cleared out of the Bay Mills area following installation of a massive natural gas pipeline serving the newly expanded Bay Mills Resort & Casino, Tribal President Whitney Gravelle is furious about a pipeline again.
Not that one. The other one.
Gravelle has spent years leading opposition to Enbridge’s Line 5 and the proposed Great Lakes Tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac. Last month, however, the State of Michigan dealt her cause a significant blow when two agencies under Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration issued permits needed for the tunnel project to move forward.
Gravelle called the decision a “deep betrayal.”
She probably has a point. Whitmer and Gravelle have spent years standing on essentially the same side of the Line 5 fight, with Whitmer campaigning as a Great Lakes protector and her administration pursuing legal action to shut down the existing pipelines in the Straits. Gravelle and Bay Mills have been even more steadfast, arguing that Line 5 threatens the Great Lakes, Tribal treaty rights and waters sacred to the Bay Mills Indian Community.
Then Whitmer’s own environmental department handed Enbridge a permit.
EGLE’s decision came after an extensive review that included Tribal consultation, public hearings and tens of thousands of public comments. The Michigan DNR issued a separate permit the same day, acknowledging potential impacts to protected species including Houghton’s goldenrod and dwarf lake iris and requiring Enbridge to restore affected plant populations.
Apparently even the flowers got a mitigation plan.
Gravelle got a permit approval.
There is, of course, a certain amount of petroleum-based irony in Gravelle’s outrage. The Tribe recently completed a major expansion of its resort and casino, a development served by natural gas infrastructure. Residents along the route watched Miller Pipeline crews tear through lawns and wooded areas while installing a large new gas line to serve the development.
There were no paddle-up protests. No declarations that fossil-fuel infrastructure had no place in the community. Nobody chained themselves to a Miller Pipeline excavator. The gas flowed toward the casino, the construction crews eventually packed up, and everybody went about their business.
Apparently the environmental impact of a pipeline depends somewhat on which direction the product is headed.
That doesn’t make Gravelle wrong about Line 5. The proposed Enbridge tunnel is an entirely different project, in an entirely different location, carrying a different product and raising legitimate questions about treaty rights and the Great Lakes. But it does make the moral simplicity of the argument a little harder to fit on a protest sign.
Whitmer isn’t escaping the irony either. Her administration has spent years in court trying to shut down Enbridge’s existing Line 5 crossing while agencies within that same administration have now issued permits allowing Enbridge to pursue the tunnel designed to replace it. Michigan has effectively arrived at the position that Line 5 needs to go, Line 5’s replacement can proceed, and everyone should please stop asking follow-up questions.
The situation became even stranger July 31, when the Michigan Supreme Court vacated a separate approval from the Michigan Public Service Commission and ordered regulators to take another look at the project. The court determined the commission had not properly applied the Michigan Environmental Protection Act when reviewing the proposed tunnel. Enbridge suddenly found itself with state environmental permits in one hand and a Supreme Court decision sending another major approval back for more homework in the other.
Then the federal government entered the chat.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued Enbridge its federal permit to construct the roughly four-mile tunnel beneath the Straits, determining that the project was “not contrary to the public interest.” The Corps’ decision represents another major regulatory victory for Enbridge, although construction still cannot move forward until the Public Service Commission completes the review ordered by the Michigan Supreme Court.
After nearly a decade of fighting, Enbridge has therefore achieved the regulatory equivalent of getting permission from Dad after Mom said no, only to discover Grandma owns the house.
Gravelle wasn’t any happier about the federal decision. She accused the Army Corps of disregarding Tribal treaty rights and treating Tribal Nations as obstacles rather than sovereign governments. Bay Mills and other Tribal Nations maintain that the Straits are protected by the 1836 Treaty of Washington and have promised to continue fighting the project.
So the Line 5 debate rolls on, with nearly everyone involved now able to claim some sort of victory and betrayal at the same time. Enbridge has another permit. The Michigan Supreme Court sent another one back. Whitmer still opposes the existing pipeline while agencies under her administration have permitted its proposed replacement. Gravelle remains firmly opposed to Line 5 while the natural gas keeps flowing into Bay Mills.
The lawyers, meanwhile, remain the only party to the dispute enjoying uninterrupted service.
And Houghton’s goldenrod, having somehow negotiated the most concrete protections out of anyone involved, will apparently be getting its dirt put back.
