Enbridge Line 5 has spilled at least 1.1M gallons in past 50 years
“The organization released the results of Wallace's research this week, estimating that Line 5, which runs from Superior, Wis., to Sarnia, Ontario by way of Michigan, has spilled at least 1.13 million gallons of oil in 29 incidents since 1968.
The data comes from inspection records obtained by the NWF through the Freedom of Information Act and others put online recently by the Pipeline Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), which Congress has required to make more information accessible to the public.
The NWF considers its estimate conservative because the research identified known spills, like a 1980 spill in Hiawatha National Forest, that weren't in federal records. Regulatory requirements during much of the 1980s stipulated Enbridge only had to report spills to the state, not the federal government.
Many incidents were related to construction mishaps. Others were caused by manufacturing defects in the pipe, such as stress cracking along a seam.
The most common theme was the method of spill discovery.
"Only one spill I could find was discovered by leak detection systems," said Wallace, a Pipeline Safety Trust board member who co-authored the NWF's 2012 "Sunken Hazard" report that helped galvanize scrutiny on the Line 5 section under the Straits of Mackinac.
Many of the spills incident records do not say how the leak was initially detected. The remainder were found by the public or Enbridge staff on the ground.
The NWF says that's a troubling reminder of the colossal failure that caused the Line 6B spill into the Kalamazoo River in 2010, when the company didn't notice the pipeline had ruptured until being alerted by an outside caller 17 hours later.”
All pipelines leak, from Enbridge’s mouth:
The group says the amount of manufacturing and construction defects and weld failures revealed by Wallace's research call into question the overall integrity of the Line 5 system.
"This newly-released data shows a worse history of spill and detection systems failing over time," said Mike Shriberg, NWF Great Lakes regional director, who also sits on the state of Michigan's Pipeline Safety Advisory Board.
The most recent spill is a small one, about 8 gallons, caused by an equipment failure on March 5, 2015 near Marenisco that Enbridge staff discovered while conducting a station review. The cause was recorded as a seal that failed due to "normal wear and tear."
“According to the data, the largest spills happened earlier in Line 5's history -- apart from a fairly well known 222,600-gallon oil and natural gas liquid spill near Crystal Falls in 1999, caused by the line lying on a rock, which forced the evacuation of about 500 people after responders ignited a vapor cloud that sparked a 36-hour long fire.
In 1972 near Iron River, a 252,000-gallon spill was caused by a longitudinal weld failure. A resulting fire injured two people.“
http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2017/04/enbridge_line_5_spill_history.html
