TRAVERSE CITY, MICH. –  Two oil pipelines at the bottom the waterway linking Lakes Huron and Michigan will get additional support structures to help prevent potentially devastating spills, officials said Thursday.

 

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette and Dan Wyant, director of the Department of Environmental Quality, said they had put Enbridge Energy Partners LP on notice following the company's acknowledgement it was partly out of compliance with an agreement dating to 1953, when the pipelines were laid in the Straits of Mackinac.

 

As a condition of an easement granted by the state, Enbridge agreed that support anchors would be placed at least every 75 feet. In a response last month to a lengthy series of questions about the condition of the lines from Schuette and Wyant, the Canadian company acknowledged some sections don't meet the requirement, although the average distance between supports is 54 feet.

 

 

WOODHAVEN, Mich. (WJBK) - Crews in Woodhaven are responding to a Hazmat situation that's forced the evacuation of the Detroiter Truck Stop. 

Emergency crews in the area tell Fox 2 there is a leak in a tank at the Buckeye Tank Farm.

 

More than one thousand gallons of gasoline leaked at the plant but the fire chief tells Fox 2's Maurielle Lue Woodhaven residents are not in any danger.

 

Monday morning, at approximately 11:30, Woodhaven police and fire jumped into action, responding to a call for what officials called a very bad spill at Michigan Fuel located inside the Buckeye Tank Farm.

 

JACKSON, Mich., July 17, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- An independent national survey has ranked Consumers Energy as the top "environmental champion" among providers of electricity and natural gas in the Midwest.

 

The new survey results, released by Cogent Reports, a division of Market Strategies International, also rank Consumers Energy as the second-most trusted electric and natural gas provider in the Midwest, and third overall in the country.

 

Federal requirements under the 1990 Oil Pollution Act (OPA), which came into question following the 2010 Macondo deepwater well blowout and crude oil spill, appear likely to get a fresh look as US onshore crude production climbs and producers scramble to get it to market, suggested some participants in a recent Environmental Law Institute seminar.

"OPA began as a response to the Exxon Valdez spill, and was focused on marine transportation initially," said Russell V. Randle, a Partner at Patton Boggs LLP's Washington, DC, office who moderated the discussion. "But there also have been major spills involving pipelines, rail transportation, and barge transportation in the time since.

"As a policy matter, we're seeing symptoms of a much broader issue: We have to move a lot more domestic oil than we originally thought," he continued. "Much of it is in places that are a significant distance from where it can be refined. That's causing us to make a lot of difficult transportation choices."