West Central Michigan News

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s ongoing attempt to close energy infrastructure Line 5 pipeline was unsuccessful in an appeals court ruling earlier this month, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy reported on June 17. 

While she has plans to take her case to the Michigan Supreme Court, many Michiganders are focused on what the closing could cost them as they consider the costs of heating their houses and businesses. The organization reported that Nessel’s ongoing attempt to close the pipeline is doing nothing more than gouging the state of time and money.

Currently, the law says that Enbridge, a Canadian energy company, can move the pipeline to 100 feet below the bed of the Great Lakes. Nessel has insisted that moving the pipeline is much safer than leaving it alone.

At the same time, several concerned locals have called on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Nessel, stating that removing the pipeline could do more harm than good. Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio even penned a letter to Whitmer, arguing that closing the pipeline would adversely affect his state and end “more than 1,000 good-paying union jobs,” between Michigan and Ohio, according to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. It could also restrict the jet fuel used by the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. 

The Operating Engineers Local 324 joined forces with the Michigan Chamber of Commerce to ask Whitmer to permit the progression of the project. State House Rep. Brian Elder (D-Bay City) stepped in and created a labor caucus in the House to back trade workers who could be hired to work on the tunnel. If Democrats fail to back the line, it could appear that “a Sierra Club scorecard means more to some Democratic members than the position of the building trades,” Elder said, according to the Mackinac Center For Public Policy.