After backlash, Whitmer says EGLE must consider Michigan Supreme Court ruling on Line 5 permits

Filed 51m ago · Via Michigan Advance · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Daderot · CC0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's office says the state's environmental agency, EGLE, must factor in the state Supreme Court's July decision tossing approval of Enbridge's Line 5 tunnel project before its own permits can proceed. The court found regulators failed to properly weigh environmental harms from extending the pipeline's life; Whitmer also sent Enbridge's CEO a letter urging the company to abandon the tunnel entirely for an alternative that gets oil out of the Straits sooner.

Enbridge counters that years of litigation and political intervention are the only things standing between the tunnel and completion, and says it remains willing to meet with the governor. Tribal nations and environmental groups, who've pushed for a shutdown for years, called Whitmer's move a sign that pressure and law can work together, though EGLE's own director notes the permit's legal status is still unresolved with fewer than six months left in Whitmer's term.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A politician rediscovering her spine six months before she leaves office is a familiar kind of weather around here, like a neighbor mowing his lawn right before the open house. The pipeline's been sitting under those straits since before most of this argument started, and it'll keep sitting there while everybody issues statements about how seriously they're taking it now. Talk is cheap and the tunnel isn't built yet either way.

Source: Read the original at Michigan Advance → Scored: Our Story Begins · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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