The long-running feud between Canadian energy giant Enbridge and a coalition of Michigan environmentalists and tribal nations has reached another milestone.

Enbridge is proposing to build a tunnel to carry an oil pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac, which connects Lake Michigan with Lake Huron. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently held three "scoping" meetings as part of evaluating the project's environmental impact.

Enbridge maintains the project known as Line 5 is safe and vital to the region's economy.

Sean McBrearty, campaign coordinator for the environmental group Oil and Water Don't Mix, said digging a tunnel for an oil pipeline under the Great Lakes is a recipe for disaster.

"They're talking about building this directly under the profile of the existing pipeline," McBrearty explained. "A tunnel would not only be horribly hazardous to any workers inside the tunnel and to the project, but could potentially even cause an oil spill in the pipeline above it."

Enbridge claimed if the project is halted, fuel prices in the region will soar, but McBrearty noted the company's own analysts said the effect would be negligible. The Calgary, Alberta, company owns and manages thousands of miles of oil and gas pipelines across North America.

Enbridge has a history of ecological disasters, including a 2010 spill in Michigan, sending more than a million gallons of crude oil down a 35-mile stretch of the Kalamazoo River. McBrearty argued it is too risky to trust them on the tunnel project.

"We're asking the Army Corps to really take a look at Enbridge's corporate history," McBrearty noted. "Which includes the Kalamazoo oil spill, where essentially negligence at Enbridge caused one of the largest inland oil spills in U.S. history."

Enbridge has structured its corporate operations through a network of dozens of U.S. subsidiaries, which McBrearty warned could leave Michiganders holding the bag.

"If this pipeline ruptures, if something goes wrong, there's actually a good chance that Enbridge's subsidiaries could just go bankrupt," McBrearty cautioned. "Taxpayers would be left paying for a major oil cleanup in the Great Lakes."

He added the Corps of Engineers has received thousands of comments, most of them opposing Line 5. The agency is accepting public comments through the end of this week, but has not said when the report will be published.

The Iowa House has passed a bill to restrict the use of eminent domain for carbon dioxide pipeline operators in the state. The measure would require the companies to receive permission from landowners before constructing the pipelines.

Right now, the pipeline companies have to get permission only from the three-member, unelected Iowa Utilities Board to use eminent domain, and landowners are completely left out of the process.

Devyn Hall, organizer for the group Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, said House File 565 would give property owners back the ability to make decisions.

"It pulls the power back into the people's hands," Hall asserted. "With landowners, they'd be able to have some control over what's happening in their lives rather than rely on an unelected, three-person board to make decisions for them."

As it stands, Iowa law has no requirement for pipeline companies to get permission from landowners before imposing eminent domain and taking it. The bill awaits action in the Senate.

Specifically, the bill would require pipeline operators to obtain voluntary easements on 90% of properties along a proposed line before employing eminent domain. At least three corporations are discussing using pipelines through to route carbon dioxide emissions out of the state in exchange for carbon tax credits, part of a larger removal strategy called carbon capture and storage.

For now, the Utilities Board has the final say over whether it can happen, which Hall argued leaves Iowa landowners vulnerable to the whims of those corporations, and unprotected under Iowa's eminent domain law.

"Right now what this fight means is it's a decision between whether we'll allow private companies to use eminent domain for private gain, or if we will stand with our own people and say these polluting companies can't have control over what happens to us," Hall contended.

The bill must pass through the Senate Commerce Committee by the end of this week, where its fate is uncertain. Several similar pipeline bills have died there.

The U.S. EPA is hosting a webinar
this week on its proposed new drinking water regulations.

The Agency has just announced plans to limit harmful toxic substances
known as PFAS in drinking water, and says cleaner water will prevent thousands of deaths and improve the lives of Pennsylvania residents.

Myron Arnowitt, Pennsylvania director for Clean Water Action, said the proposal is a step in the right direction to clean up the state's drinking water while preventing further contamination. He said PFAS are used in consumer products, firefighting foam, food packaging, and many other things.

"We've been increasingly concerned over the years that we have worked on this that these chemicals are getting throughout our environment," he said. "They're in our water. We're finding it in soil, we're finding it in our bodies. I think that the EPA proposal is going to be really important for Pennsylvania. "

In addition to this week's webinar, Arnowitt encouraged people to voice their concerns over the
EPA's proposal during an online public hearing May 4th. The agency expects to finalize its plan by the end of this year, at which time water utilities would have three to five years to comply.

Arnowitt added Pennsylvania has a history of PFAS contamination and the state has set higher drinking water standards, but said Pennsylvanians remain concerned about potential exposure.

"I think cancer is certainly the biggest issue that people are worried about. But there are people who experience other kinds of health problems from having water that's been contaminated by PFAS," he said.

Arnowitt said the EPA's proposal would require public utilities to monitor levels of six different PFAS and remove them if they exceed safe drinking water standards. The last day to register for the May 4th public hearing is April 28th.

Researchers with the University of New Hampshire are taking to the skies to study the state's increasingly fragmented forests.

Urban and agricultural growth, and roads are carving up large swaths of forestland into smaller patches, exposing new forest edges to invasive species and uprooting wildlife.

Russ Congalton, professor of natural resources and the environment at the University of New Hampshire, said they're using drones to get a better look at how forests are responding.

"So we could see 50 meters into the forest," Congalton suggested. "There's still a change in the vegetation, there's still a change in the density of the vegetation, there probably are some temperature changes."

Congalton pointed out newly-created forest edges affect tree mortality, which increases carbon emissions contributing to climate change. They are also more susceptible to invasive species, like the woolly adelgid, attacking hemlock trees across New England.

New Hampshire lost more than 126,000 acres of forest from 1983 to 2017, a nearly 3% reduction, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

Congalton noted by using drones, researchers can view nearly 100 acres of forest in 40 minutes, helping them not only cover more distance, but detect and measure the forest's adjustment at the new "edges" sooner.

"We save tons of effort, tons of money and tons of time in order to get this kind of information in a lot more efficient and effective manner," Congalton explained.

Congalton added some residents have at times not been happy about seeing drones near their property, but he hopes they know the camera is focused on the trees, and there are a lot of them. At nearly 80% forest coverage, New Hampshire ranks as the second most-forested state in the U.S.


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