Line 5 Pipeline

The state's high court says the Michigan Public Service Commission failed to fully consider the project's potential environmental impacts.

State agencies said the pipeline tunnel construction would affect Native American burial sites, wetlands and threatened and endangered species but concluded the benefits of the tunnel outweigh the damages. The project remains tied up in court.

Line 5 fans and foes have been fighting for years over the best way to reduce oil spill risks from the lake bottom pipeline, with some supporting the tunnel and others calling for a pipeline shutdown

Pipeline owner Enbridge wanted a lawsuit from Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel to be moved to federal court. But in a unanimous decision, justices ruled Enbridge’s arguments for doing so were ‘not persuasive.’

Michigan has been trying to shut down the controversial pipeline since 2019. A technical question before the court could seal its fate.

Enbridge sought to stop the state from trying any further to shut down the pipeline, which in Wisconsin, runs through the Upper Peninsula, the Straits of Mackinac, and Lower Peninsula, before ending in Ontario, Canada.

Public comments are due by the end of the week after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed a tunnel alternative last month.

Line 5 transports up to 22.68 million gallons of crude oil and natural gas liquids through the Straits of Mackinac each day, with one University of Michigan researcher pointing to the region as the worst place for a Great Lakes Oil Spill.

Weeks before an anticipated final permitting decision regarding the Line 5 pipeline tunnel project, federal regulators put a new option on the table. Environmentalists panned the last-minute change as a 'bait-and-switch'

The massive oil spill in the Kalamazoo River 15 years ago polluted the water and shoreline and left oil-coated wildlife. More than a million gallons of oil was recovered along a more than 35 mile stretch of the river.