The Rover Ripple Effect

When it comes to Michigan’s natural resources, no one cares more for protecting the state’s environmental health more than the Michigan Forest Products Council. In the forest products industry, we have much at stake when it comes to the health of the forest and lands—our work is there, but so are our homes, families, and the communities in which we live.

In addition to the hundreds of thousands of jobs the energy industry has supported and billions in investments that have poured in over the past 10 years thanks to the development of domestic energy resources, it may be that our nation’s—and Michigan’s—most exciting times are still to come, thanks to midstream infrastructure projects right here in our state.

One of those projects, the Rover Pipeline, has recently been approved by federal officials and construction on the 713-mile pipeline is about to begin.

The Rover Pipeline is an instrumental, game-changing project that will benefit the local economy and workforce of every community it travels through. In total, the proposed project will invest over $4.2 billion in America’s economy, lead to the purchase of more than $1 billion in goods and equipment from U.S. manufacturers, and create over 10,000 construction jobs, including between 1,000 and 1,500 positions here in Michigan.

During its first full year in service, Rover will pay $147 million in property taxes, including $6 million to Michigan. Over $124 million will be directly paid for easements to landowners as well, including owners of Michigan’s private forests – the largest proportion of the state’s 20 million acres of forestland.

The key to good land management is stewardship. Our forefathers came to this land for access to its vast resources. Are we smarter about how we use and care for those resources than previous generations? Absolutely. And we are eager to work with Rover towards building the most technologically advanced, environmentally responsible pipeline possible.

The Rover team’s safety record and history in our region speaks for itself. Energy Transfer—the company behind the pipeline—has helped supply natural gas service throughout the country for more than 60 years. The company operates more than 71,000 miles of pipelines in the U.S. and is among the best in the country in the operation and maintenance of its pipelines.

In an effort to provide even greater assurance to their commitment to safety, Rover has partnered with experienced land consultants early in the process to ensure that landowners and the environment are protected to the greatest extent possible. Energy Transfer has vowed to restore the land to preconstruction elevations and contours, protect the vital top soil, and repair and replace any impacts to drain tiles or drainage systems traversed by the pipeline.

We are confident that the pipeline will be built to the most stringent environmental standards following guidelines set by state and federal regulatory agencies, and will make use of the very experienced local labor and construction workers who have shown themselves more than capable of building this pipeline safely.

Our history of good stewardship has afforded us a great opportunity. We are in a position now more than ever to put our natural resources to their best environmental, social and economic use. The Rover Pipeline will help us continue that history, and MFPC looks forward to a successful construction process.