'Pinhole-Sized' Pipeline Leak Raises Great Lakes Fears

Experts have warned of an environmental catastrophe to the Great Lakes should the pipeline running under the Straits of Mackinac ever be breached. (Photo by Lars Lentz licensed by Wikimedia Creative Commons)

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Environmental officials are worried about a pinhole-sized leak and what it says about the integrity of a petroleum pipeline that runs across the Upper Peninsula and under the Straits of Mackinac, connecting Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.

The small leak was discovered during a scheduled Dec. 8 inspection of the 61-year-old Line 5 pipeline. Because of it, an undetermined amount of natural gas liquid was dispersed into the atmosphere north of Manistique, near the Indian River, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said Tuesday.

Officials with the Canadian oil giant Enbridge, which operates the Line 5 pipeline, said the natural gas didn’t escape because of a leak, but because of a “pinhole-sized defect, observed in the weld of the pipe,” the Detroit Free Press reports.

The defect “created a small, dime-sized stain on the pipe,” Enbridge spokesman Jason Manshum said, and there was “no impact from the release to the air or the soil.”

Repairs triggered reporting criteria, and regulators were notified. The fact that even a minor irregularities are detected demonstrates the company’s commitment to make repairs before the environment and health of those who live and work along the pipelines are affected, Mansum said.

But environmentalists view the pinhole-sized leak as a harbinger of bigger problems to come.

Andy Buchsbaum, vice president for conservation action of the Great Lakes Chapter of the National Wildlife Foundation, said the incident “demonstrates that eventually, all pipelines leak – the question is when and how much.”

“Knowing that sooner or later Line 5 will leak again, it’s simply unacceptable for a portion of that pipeline to be lying on the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac,” he said.

Though the contamination didn’t require remediation, David Holtz, who chairs the Sierra Club’s Michigan Chapter, told the Free Press the incident is “a wake-up call.”

Holtz called on state and federal agencies for more public accountability on the full extent of potential environmental threats from the pipeline, and to open a public debate “about whether the threat to our state’s waters and land are too great a risk to take.”

Gilbert Baker said the pinhole leak was detected in a section of pipe in Schoolcraft County’s Hiawatha Township, where he’s a supervisor for the board of trustees. Enbridge officials didn’t inform local residents about the leak, and he thinks they should have.

“It’s very easy to make a phone call and let us know,” he said.

In joint statement, Schuette and Michigan Department of Environmental Quality Director Dan Wyant said the discovery of the leak underscores both environmental fears for the Great Lakes and the important work of the Michigan Petroleum Pipeline Task Force, which heard a briefing on the situation Monday.

“This incident underscores the importance of the task force as it continues an exhaustive review of the safety of petroleum pipelines in Michigan, and to implement every possible safety precaution to protect the ecology and the economy of the Great Lakes,” they said.

Related:

• Enbridge on Notice to Reinforce Pipelines to Avoid Great Lakes Catastrophe
• Coast Guard’s Alarming Warning on Great Lakes Oil Spill

The task force put Enbridge on notice to reinforce the pipelines, which daily carry up to 23 million gallons of crude oil and natural gas fluids each day, after a University of Michigan study warned of an environmental disaster in the Great Lakes if the infrastructure were breached.

“I can’t think – in my experience – of another place on the Great Lakes where an oil spill would have as wide an area of impact, in as short of time, as at the Straits of Mackinac,” the study’s author, David Schwab, a research scientist at the U-M Water Center, told the Detroit Free Press last summer.

In another another alarming warning last fall, the U.S. Coast Guard said it had “almost no cabability” to respond to submerged oil spills.

Rear Admiral Fred Midgett, commander of the Coast Guard’s District 9, told the Detroit Free Press at the time there’s not much the Coast Guard can do to respond to a “heavy oil” spill – the kind with far-reaching environmental and economic implications on Michigan’s wildlife and multibillion-dollar fishing and boating industries.

Those and other concerns led to the creation of the Michigan Petroleum Pipeline Task Force in 2014. In addition to the Michigan Department of the Attorney General and the Department of Environmental Quality, the task force includes the Michigan Public Service Commission, Department of Natural Resources, DEQ’s Office of the Great Lakes, Michigan Department of Transportation and Michigan State Police, Emergency Management and Homeland Security Division.