U.S. Army analysis finds Great Lakes pipeline tunnel would have sweeping environmental impacts
The analysis moves the corps a step closer to approving the tunnel for Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac. The tunnel was proposed in 2018 at a cost of $500 million but has been bogged down by legal challenges. The corps fast-tracked the project in April after President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies in January to identify energy projects for expedited emergency permitting.
A final environmental assessment is expected by autumn, with a permitting decision to follow later this year. The agency initially planned to issue a permitting decision in early 2026.
With that permit in hand, Enbridge would only need permission from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy before it could begin constructing the tunnel. That's far from a given, though.
Environmentalists have been pressuring the state to deny the permit. Meanwhile, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer are trying to win court rulings that would force Enbridge to remove the existing pipeline from the straits for good.
Construction could have major short-term, long-term impacts
The analysis notes that the tunnel would eliminate the risk of a boat anchor rupturing the pipeline and causing a spill in the straits, a key concern for environmentalists. But the construction would have sweeping effects on everything from recreation to wildlife.
Many of the impacts, such as noise, vistas marred by 400-foot (121-meter) cranes, construction lights degrading star-gazing opportunities at Headlands International Dark Sky Park and vibrations that would disturb aquatic wildlife would end when the work is completed, the report found.
Other impacts would last longer, including the loss of wetlands and vegetation on both sides of the strait that connects Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, and the loss of nearly 300 trees that the northern long-eared bat and tricolored bat use to roost. Grading and excavation also could disturb or destroy archaeological sites.
The tunnel-boring machine could cause vibrations that could shift the area's geology. Soil in the construction area could become contaminated and nearly 200 truck trips daily during the six-year construction period would degrade area roads, the analysis found. Gas mixing with water seeping into the tunnel could result in an explosion, but the analysis notes that Enbridge plans to install fans to properly ventilate the tunnel during excavation.
'Our goal is to have the smallest possible environmental footprint,' Enbridge officials said in a statement.
The Sierra Club issued a statement Friday saying the tunnel remains 'an existential threat.'
'Chances of an oil spill in the Great Lakes — our most valuable freshwater resource — skyrockets if this tunnel is built in the Straits,' the group said. 'We can't drink oil. We can't fish or swim in oil.'
Tunnel would protect portion of Line 5 running through straits
Enbridge has been using the Line 5 pipeline to transport crude oil and natural gas liquids between Superior, Wisconsin, and Sarnia, Ontario, since 1953. Roughly 4 miles (6 kilometers) of the pipeline runs along the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac.
Concerns about the aging pipeline rupturing and causing a potentially disastrous spill in the straits have been building over the last decade. Those fears intensified in 2018 when an anchor damaged the line.
Enbridge contends that the line remains structurally sound, but it struck a deal with then-Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder's administration in 2018 that calls for the company to replace the straits portion of the line with a new section that would be encased in a protective underground tunnel.
Enbridge and environmentalists spar in court battles
Environmentalists, Native American tribes and Democrats have been fighting in court for years to stop the tunnel and force Enbridge to remove the existing pipeline from the straits. They've had little success so far.
A Michigan appellate court in February validated the state Public Service Commission's permits for the tunnel. Nessel sued in 2019 seeking to void the easement that allows Line 5 to run through the straits. That case is still pending. Whitmer revoked the easement in 2020, but Enbridge challenged that decision and a federal appellate court in April ruled that the case can proceed.
Another legal fight over Line 5 in Wisconsin
About 12 miles (19 kilometers) of Line 5 runs across the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa's reservation in northern Wisconsin. That tribe sued in 2019 to force Enbridge to remove the line from the reservation, arguing it's prone to spilling and that easements allowing it to operate on the reservation expired in 2013.
Enbridge has proposed a 41-mile (66-kilometer) reroute around the reservation. The tribe has filed a lawsuit seeking to void state construction permits for the project and has joined several other groups in challenging the permits through the state's contested case process.
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Reuters
13 hours ago
- Reuters
In Michigan's cherry country, the federal safety net is fraying
CENTRAL LAKE, MICHIGAN, Aug 16 (Reuters) - The frost came in late April, sliding across the hills before dawn. Juliette King McAvoy stepped into the orchard, hoping the cold had spared the cherry buds. But they glittered in the morning sun like glass, just as dead. Weather had damaged much of the family orchard's crop for the third time in five years. The blow landed on a farm and an industry already squeezed by the Trump administration's changes to government services, immigration and trade policies. King Orchards' harvest crew from Guatemala arrived in mid-July, short-handed and weeks late after delays in securing the H-2A seasonal farmworker visas they rely on each year. They paid more to ship fresh cherries by private carrier after a U.S. Postal Service reorganization left fresh fruit sitting a bit too long. A U.S. Department of Agriculture grant request for funding a cold-storage unit remained in limbo, as Washington cut spending on farm programs and agricultural research. And Jack King, Juliette's brother and the farm's agronomist, kept searching for fertilizer cheap enough to haul and untouched by President Donald Trump's trade wars. "It all slows us down," King McAvoy, the farm's business manager, said during a brief pause in July's harried harvest. Farmers in the hills near Grand Traverse Bay, where the fruit of their labor has filled pies and fed generations, said they are caught in the crosshairs of Trump's reshaping of government, with sharp cuts and increasing delays hitting the $227 million U.S. tart cherry industry, opens new tab hard. From weather, plant disease and pest woes, USDA forecast, opens new tab Michigan will lose 41% of its tart cherry crop this year, compared to 2024. Northwest Michigan, where the King farm is located, faces the steepest drop — about 70%, according to the Cherry Industry Administrative Board. After the April freeze, King McAvoy's phone rang. It was her friend and fellow grower, Emily Miezio, in Suttons Bay, Michigan. "What are you seeing?" Juliette stared at the trees. "I'm not sure. But it's not good." South of the Kings, the cold snap left farmer Don Gallagher's trees sparse. "We can grow leaves," he said, as his family hunted for fruit in the branches. "We just can't grow cherries." Michigan's cherry roots run deep, from French settlers bringing the fruit to the Midwest. The Montmorency, ruby-red and mouth-puckering, became the region's signature, in pies, juice, dried fruit and the syrup Midwesterners spoon over cheesecake. When John King bought the farm in 1980, cherries were a Michigan birthright, like cars. He grew up in a General Motors family in Flint, working summers picking fruit. "It felt pure," said King, now 74. He secured 80 acres of land with help from a federal loan. The roadside stand came with a preacher's warning painted on the sign: Repent lest you perish in the fires of hell. He covered it with a rainbow and his dream: King Orchards. Today, it's a full family operation: In addition to John's daughter Juliette and son Jack, John's wife Betsy runs the market with Jack's wife, Courtney. John's brother Jim manages the harvest; Jim's wife Rose is chief baker; and their son-in-law Mark Schiller runs the hand-pick crews. Antrim County, where the farm sits, has long leaned Republican. The Kings, who are progressives, say the past few years have shown how national politics can ripple through their orchards. Trump's sweeping tax-and-spending law expanded safety nets for large commodity crop operations, such as corn and soybeans, for feed and biofuels. But nutrition and local food programs fruit and vegetable growers depend on were slashed, and his trade policies chilled demand from top export partners, according to government data and academic researchers. While USDA did not answer Reuters' specific questions regarding challenges facing the cherry industry, a spokesperson said Trump's law boosts the farm safety net, and includes increased funding for programs that support specialty crops and fight plant pests and diseases. The Kings and nearly a dozen other farmers across party lines told Reuters they expected tariffs to return if Trump won, but they hoped for a more surgical approach. About one-third of the Kings' concentrate goes overseas, mostly to Taiwan and New Zealand. But Michigan's crop loss will play a bigger role in diminished tart cherry exports than tariffs this year, the Kings and other growers said. The White House did not comment on questions about the administration's trade policy. Asked about delivery delays, the USPS said it had a plan, opens new tab to save $36 billion over 10 years that would mean slightly slower delivery for some mail, but faster service for other customers. While Michigan orchards struggle to fill bins, branches are bending in the West, with Washington State's sweet cherry production 29% bigger this year due to favorable weather, USDA forecasted, opens new tab. But growers there face different woes: fewer places to sell and low prices. In 2024, the U.S. exported nearly $506 million in fresh cherries worldwide - up 10% in value and 3% in volume from the year before, U.S. Census Bureau trade data shows. In the first half of this year, as Trump's trade wars reignited, U.S. fresh fruit exports fell 17% in volume and 15% in value. U.S. shipments to China never fully recovered after Trump's 2018 trade war. Sales to Canada also fell 18% by volume in the first six months. "There's little appetite for U.S. products in Canada," said Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. Jon DeVaney, president of the Washington State Tree Fruit Association, said wholesale sweet cherry prices are slumping, and many Northwest farmers are losing money. Back in Michigan, sideways rain lashed Suttons Bay. Emily Miezio hunched in the downpour in her family and business partners' orchard, watching the storm-lit sky. A worker steered a low-slung tree shaker to the trunk, clamping its arms tight. Tart cherries fell like red hail into a catching frame, funneled into bins, as another worker scooped out twigs and leaves, moving fast, racing the dawn. At the chilling station, a Michigan State University intern logged each truck with fruit to be cooled and processed by morning. Miezio, whose farm spans about 2,500 acres, leads the Cherry Marketing Institute, the tart cherry industry trade group. For years, they'd tried to claw back into China. "That door's pretty much slammed shut," she said, since the 2018 trade wars. Now they're courting Mexico and South Korea. On Traverse City's northern edge, the Northwest Michigan Horticulture Research Center is a 137-acre test farm. Run by Michigan State University and funded by USDA grants and grower money, it's where Dr. Nikki Rothwell has spent more than two decades helping orchards survive. She's got the sun-creased skin of someone who lives outdoors and a laugh like a cracked whip. Farmers lean on her, especially now. On a sticky summer morning, she walked the rows with interns and researchers, testing hardier trees and better fruit. When they fired up the tree shaker — a grumbling relic older than some of the scientists — a rust-colored cloud of brown rot spores rose in the heat and settled on their sleeves. Tree by tree, they logged bruised fruit and powdery mold. "This kind of research doesn't have corporate backers," Rothwell said. "It's always been the government and the growers." This month, she's submitting the last paperwork for a $100,000 USDA grant awarded under the Biden administration for a disease study — money that's part of a federal review of climate-related research. She's not sure if the money will come through. Colleagues at other land-grant schools haven't been paid, she said. Money isn't the only thing held up. So are the people needed to bring in the crop. The labor squeeze stretches coast to coast. In Oregon, grower Ian Chandler watched half a million pounds of cherries rot on trees. He began harvesting with 47 workers on June 10. He needed 120. Fear that Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in California would spread north kept some people away, he said. "We are bleeding from a thousand cuts," said Chandler, 47, an Army veteran with two sons in uniform. "It's an untenable position." White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said President Trump is committed to ensuring farmers have the workforce they need, but that there will be no safe harbor for criminal illegal immigrants. In Michigan, the King Orchards crew was short two people, whose H-2A visa paperwork in Guatemala cleared too late, said Schiller, who runs the farm's hand-pick harvest crew. A U.S. State Department spokesperson told Reuters that H-2 visa applicants should apply early and anticipate additional processing time, as U.S. embassies and consulates work to process them quickly without compromising U.S. national or economic security. Inside the barn, one of the farm's long-time workers named Maria Pascual stood at the sorting line, head wrapped against the heat, hands moving with quiet precision. She came to the U.S. from Guatemala at 17 with her father. They picked peppers and cucumbers in Florida, then followed the harvest north. She met her husband on the road. For a while, they lived the migrant rhythm — cherries in Michigan, oranges in Florida — until 1990, when they stayed for good. "When you have kids…" she said and let the sentence hang. She and her husband earned legal permanent residency under Ronald Reagan's 1986 immigration law, opens new tab, which helped millions of immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally to secure legal status. Two years ago, Maria became a U.S. citizen. "I just wanted to be a citizen," she said. "I feel like… just normal." Now, Trump's immigration policies hang over her family like a brewing storm. One brother was picked up by ICE this summer in Florida and deported. Others back home hope to come on H-2A visas. There have been no major ICE raids on Michigan farms this year. But the fear lingers, sharpened this summer by the opening of the Midwest's largest ICE detention center — up to 1,810 beds set deep in the forest in Baldwin, Michigan, where birdsong drifts over the Concertina wire.
The Herald Scotland
17 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
NCAA sanctions of Michigan favor money over rules enforcement
Get yours. Everyone else is cashing in on college football's new world, why shouldn't the NCAA? Look at the bright side: the NCAA can use Michigan's unprecedented fine for cheating - it could reach upwards of $35 million - to help pay the $2.8 billion in House case back pay owed to athletes for, you know, cheating them. PATH TO PLAYOFF: Sign up for our college football newsletter Hey, 1.25 percent of $2.8 billion is a start. If this is all confusing, it shouldn't be. There was zero chance the NCAA - which once famously sanctioned Boise State for allowing a recruit to sleep on a couch in the dorms - was laying down the law on one of its prized television properties. Even one that just last year was sanctioned for an entirely separate case of infractions within the football program, thus making Michigan a repeat offender. The worst kind of offender. A you've got to be kidding me, you can't be that stupid to try and break rules again offender. But instead of a postseason ban and/or scholarship/roster spot losses (see: real meat on the enforcement bone), the NCAA chose to reach into Michigan's deep and expansive cash war chest and grab a handful. And why not? If players are making billions from revenue sharing and private NIL deals, if coaches are making the same with fat, guaranteed contracts (some fired and paid to not coach), why can't the NCAA get in on the action? It's all fungible, anyway. Billions in money is changing hands at an alarming rate, and the four principle actors involved barely see it long enough to care. Universities, television partners, coaches, players, and now all the way back to universities with the NCAA's latest capitulation. What's worse, the sport's governing body just threw open the barn doors to (more) rampant cheating. The cost of a national title is now upwards of $35 million. Who wants some? It doesn't matter if you cheat, because the NCAA has no idea how to manage enforcement. It says so right there in the release from the committee on infractions: The NCAA is blaming the "new world of college athletics" for not taking the more significant road of scholarship reductions and postseason bans. The same "world" the NCAA created in 2021 by approving NIL deals and free player movement nearly simultaneously -- without any guardrails in place. By blaming the current "world," the NCAA conveniently allows itself a pass from making the difficult yet prudent decision of significant, meaningful penalties to one of its prized pupils. Or as the great Jerry Tarkanian once said, "The NCAA was so mad at Kentucky, they gave Cleveland State two more years probation." The NCAA says players were not part of the advanced scouting scheme concocted by Michigan's former low level staffer Connor Stalions, and shouldn't be retroactively punished for it with scholarship reductions and postseason bans. Stalions isn't the villain here, everyone. Jim Harbaugh is. The same Harbaugh who allowed Stalions to infiltrate his program, and approved his illegal scheme. I'm going to say this one more time: there's no chance in hell Harbaugh - the most meticulously organized megalomaniac of a coach this side of Nick Saban - allows anything to happen within his program without full knowledge and approval. He's not allowing some flunky hanging around the program to stand right next to his coordinators on game day, and yell out play calls - so his coordinators could then switch play calls to the corresponding play against Ohio flipping State - without knowing everything about the scheme. Harbaugh is the Michigan football team, and Michigan gaining a competitive advantage because of the scheme is exactly why the Wolverines should've been fined and had scholarships/roster spots eliminated and been given a postseason ban. To say nothing of vacating wins -- including those in the 2023 national championship season. HATE RUNS DEEP: Mateer gambling allegations latest SEC rivalry chapter history DESTINED TO FAIL: The Hugh Freeze experiment won't work at Auburn But the committee on infractions pointed to Harbaugh's three-game suspension in 2023, stating it was penalty enough for his part in the scheme. There's not a person on that committee who believes that, but it's good cover. Instead, Michigan will pay a $35 million bounty while nearly everyone in power either lied, obfuscated, or destroyed evidence about an illegal scheme that most certainly played a role in Michigan winning the 2023 national title. Money talks, everyone. It's the new world of NCAA enforcement. Who wants some? Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.
The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
Republicans who backed Trump's anti-environment bill have accepted over $105m from big oil
The Republican lawmakers who voted for Donald Trump's anti-environment tax and spending bill have accepted more than $105m in political donations from the fossil fuel industry, a new analysis has found, raising concerns about their relationship with big oil. Signed into law last month, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act includes billions of dollars in giveaways to oil and gas companies and their executives, alongside provisions to scale back credits for clean vehicles, wind and solar which were enshrined by Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). All but two GOP House members voted to support the budget bill, as did all but three GOP senators. That includes many Republicans from districts who benefited most from the IRA's green credits, and those who spent months attempting to defend renewable energy tax credits from the budget bill's provisions, such as Representative Andrew Garbarino of New York and Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and John Curtis of Utah. The new report from the environmental advocacy group Climate Power totalled up the funds the bill's backers have accepted from the fossil fuel industry over the course of their political careers, finding that House members accepted $54.4m and senators accepted $51.5m. 'These Republicans in Congress are caught red-handed taking massive donations from the oil and gas industry, and voting to give them billions and to destroy their competition from their own state's clean energy industries,' the analysis says. With House midterm elections scheduled for next year, Climate Power also looked at fossil fuel donations to the 15 House Republicans deemed most vulnerable to an electoral challenge, according to the Cook Political Report, which independently analyzes the political viability of elections and campaigns. All 15 backed the mega-bill, and together, they accepted more than $3m in donations from the fossil fuel industry, the authors found. Hailing from Colorado, Iowa, Arizona, New Jersey, California, Michigan and New York, the lawmakers on the list are from regions that have seen benefits from the IRA's credits for wind and solar energy, as well as battery manufacturing. The mega-bill puts more than 110,000 jobs from the three sectors at risk in the 15 lawmakers' districts, and is also expected to raise consumers' energy bills by up to $200 annually by 2030, according to the climate policy thinktank Energy Innovation. Some on the list had previously critiqued the bill: Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa, who has accepted $229,179 in oil and gas contributions, pledged to support clean energy tax credits but backed the legislation anyway, while Colorado's Jeff Hurd, pledged to oppose the bill due to its cuts to Medicaid but ended up supporting it. 'These Republican members of Congress all represent moderate swing districts with close elections, where voters of both parties expect their representatives to look out for them, not to kill their jobs and raise their utility bills for the sake of out-of-state special interests,' said Pete Jones, a director at Climate Power. 'These members chose who to stand up for, and they picked their billionaire donors.' Big oil spent a stunning $445m throughout the last election cycle to influence Trump and Congress, Climate Power found in January. The industry also poured more than $19m into Trump's inaugural fund, accounting for nearly 8% of all donations it raised, a report found last month. 'We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it,' Trump said in his inaugural address. Since re-entering the White House, Trump has passed not only the anti-environmental One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but has also signed a slew of executive orders and policies aimed at cracking down on clean energy and boosting already-booming oil and gas.
