The Associated Press reports that Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said this she will move in June to shut a Great Lakes oil pipeline if the governor cannot reach a resolution with operator Enbridge, saying the state is in “great peril” the longer the oil continues to flow under a sensitive waterway.
Nessel revealed her timeline in an interview with The Associated Press at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s policy conference, near where Line 5 runs under the Straits of Mackinac. Her comments came a month after she said she was hopeful that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, by June 1, would have a plan for decommissioning the 66-year-old pipes.
Nessel, a Democrat, said she has had “lengthy conservations” with Whitmer, also a Democrat, about the pipeline, and they “have always been aligned on this issue.” Whitmer has irked environmentalists by saying she is open to the construction of a tunnel beneath the lakebed to house a new segment of Line 5 in the channel where Lakes Huron and Michigan meet. The tunnel plan was backed by Whitmer’s Republican predecessor. Her administration is talking with Canada-based Enbridge after Nessel said the 2018 law authorizing the tunnel is unconstitutional.
Nessel said she has a number of legal avenues at her disposal to decommission the pipeline.
“When we file it, it’ll be available to the public and they’ll be able to have an opportunity to see all the legal arguments that we’ve made,” she said. “My team has been meeting on this since the first day that I took office. I want to obviously act quickly because I think every day that Line 5 continues to run is a day that our state is in great peril.”