Environmental groups, north and south of the border, are scrambling for answers after news broke about 98-year-old pipelines under the St. Clair River potentially being used to transport heavy crude oil from Michigan into Canada.
A Detroit Free Press article says the U.S. State Department moved a permit consideration – for Houston-based petroleum transport company Plains LPG Services – through the Federal Register back in mid-January.
A 30-day public comment period on the proposal expired on Feb. 24 with virtually no comments, the Free Press article states.
Wallaceburg environmental group ‘concerned’
Kris Lee, chair of the Wallaceburg Advisory Team for a Cleaner Habitat (WATCH) group, told the Sydenham Current this is unacceptable.
“It was one of those that you really had to know where to go to know that the application was there,” Lee said. “That is not proper consultation. When you have proper consultation, you have to go to the area where the stakeholders are… that’s in the St. Clair River area.”
Lee said Plains LPG did not do a good job at informing the public about their plans.
“In order for this company to be really ethical in their practices, they should have contacted the newspapers in this area, well in advance,” she said.
“They could have found the environmental groups, they could have very well contacted the Binational Public Advisory Council to let us know this application was coming. The fact that they went, with what I would call minimal compliance, is not ethical. It may be meeting the law, but it is not ethical.”
Lee said she has already sent notes to Lambton-Kent-Middlesex MP Bev Shipley and Sarnia-Lambton MP Marilyn Gladu, expressing her and WATCH’s concern.
“This is a U.S. company, so we really have very little recourse,” she said. “All we can do is go through our government officials. WATCH is quite concerned about the fact that there was not proper consultation.”
American environmental groups seeking extension
Lee said her American counterparts with the St. Clair River Binational Public Advisory Council are reaching out to their elected officials as well.
Patty Troy, the U.S. co-chair of the Binational Public Advisory Council, is making a number of requests, including: an extension for the comment period, the scheduling of a public hearing and the completion of an environmental assessment.
“This issue is of keen interest to the St. Clair River Binational Public Advisory Council and is pertinent to our efforts to remove Beneficial Use Impairments for the St. Clair River Area of Concern,” Troy wrote in a letter to the the U.S. State Department.
Pipelines were built in 1918
Reports say the two pipelines, located in Marysville, St. Clair County, are 8 inches in diameter and were built in 1918. They were fitted with 5-inch diameter liners at some unknown time.
Back in 2014, the U.S. State Department, approved permits for Plains LPG to operate six pipelines under the St. Clair River and one line under the Detroit River.
The permits were needed after Plains LPG acquired the pipelines from another company. The State Department initially approved the shipment of “light liquid hydrocarbons.”
However, Plains LPG provided the State Department with communications from 1971, in which the previous owners stated it planned to use two of the pipelines under the St. Clair River to transport crude and other liquid hydrocarbons.
The State Department responded saying a 1918 Presidential Permit had authorized the transportation of crude oil and would be allowed now under federal rules, reports say.
Watch for more on this story.
– Photo credit: Google Maps
