Where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron connect, powerful water currents rush in opposite directions over an antiquated pipeline known as Line 5. Along the pipeline’s route from Wisconsin to Ontario, via the Straits of Mackinac, more than 1 million gallons of oil have reportedly spilled in the past 50 years.

Experts say Line 5 is vulnerable to future leaks and poses a risk to the livelihood of Indigenous communities, the region’s thriving wildlife and the drinking water of millions of Great Lakes residents.

Decades-old battles to remove the Canadian-owned pipeline from the Bad River Band reservation by Lake Superior and the lakebed of the Straits of Mackinac have played out mostly in Wisconsin and Michigan, respectively. Activists seeking the shutdown of Line 5 recently brought the fight to Chicago to consolidate a larger grassroots effort ahead of a presidential election that policy experts say will be critical to the pipeline’s future.

“Essentially, what we are asking for and urging that the current and the next administration do, is come up with a regional plan that continues this clean energy transition we’re already on,” said Bentley Johnson, director of federal government affairs at the Michigan League of Conservation Voters. “Let’s start by decommissioning the most dangerous infrastructure that we have — and we really feel like the facts show that Line 5 is America’s most dangerous pipeline.

“In Bad River, we’re one storm away, one bad flood away from eroding the river bank and exposing this pipeline,” he said. “In the straits, we’re one anchor strike away, we’re one crack away from a devastating oil spill that jeopardizes the drinking water for tens of millions.”

Clean water remains the top environmental concern for most Americans, according to a Gallup poll conducted earlier this year. And protecting the Great Lakes, one of the world’s largest surface freshwater ecosystems, has become urgent as population growth and human-made climate change cause water shortages in parts of the United States. According to research by Colorado State University, nearly half of the country’s 204 freshwater basins might not be able to meet monthly water demands by 2071.

Line 5 is owned by Calgary-based Enbridge. With its large network of pipelines, the company transports about 30% of the crude oil produced in North America and nearly 20% of the natural gas used in the United States, according to its website.

In order to continue transporting over 20 million gallons of crude oil and natural gas liquids daily, and in response to state and federal lawsuits, Enbridge has proposed building a tunnel for the section of the pipeline in the Straits of Mackinac. It also wants to reroute the portion traversing the Bad River reservation to a new segment nearby but farther away from Lake Superior.

“We remain committed to operating Line 5 responsibly with enhanced safety measures in the Straits that protect Michigan’s natural resources and infrastructure in the Straits,” according to Ryan Duffy, company spokesperson. “Enbridge hosts regular community gatherings to answer questions about our operations and the relocation project in northern Wisconsin. We regularly discuss pipeline safety which is the very foundation of our business at Enbridge.”

Duffy said Enbridge’s monitoring data shows Line 5 operates safely.

The company and environmental advocates have different priorities when it comes to the Great Lakes ecosystem, economy and energy needs.

But both camps are leveraging their positions to secure U.S. government support.

Enbridge needs federal permitting pending an environmental review from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to move the pipeline out of Bad River Band, as well as state and federal approval to start building the tunnel in the straits. Anti-pipeline activists hope for sweeping executive action to revoke a presidential permit that allows Line 5 to operate in the country.

A ‘ticking time bomb’

Linda Sullivan grew up in the South Shore neighborhood and every day during the summer, she and her friends would ride their bikes to the lake at Rainbow Beach or Promontory Point and take a dip in the water — pushing through hundreds of alewives and questionable muck before passage of the Clean Water Act of 1972.

“I didn’t think a thing of it. I knew it was gross,” Sullivan laughed. “But, you know, I’m very emotionally attached to Lake Michigan, as I think almost everyone in Illinois is. It’s our lake. And I, and everyone I love and know, not to mention the millions of people I don’t know, drink Lake Michigan water every day.”

She now lives in Lombard, 30 miles west of her old neighborhood. But she has found a way to stay connected to the lake, volunteering in the federal action team of the Sierra Club chapter in Illinois. The group speaks with their congressional representatives about Line 5 — in her case, with U.S. Rep. Sean Casten — to have them pressure the president to act in favor of American citizens who depend on the Great Lakes.

Advocates — pointing to Line 5’s history of more than 30 spills — say future, and more destructive, spills are inevitable unless proactive steps are taken to close that vulnerable portion of the pipeline. According to research by Beth Wallace, Great Lakes climate and energy director at the National Wildlife Federation, 33 such cases in the last 50 years spilled 1.13 million gallons of oil as reported by Enbridge to the federal agency that regulates pipelines. However, operators are only required to report spills of a particular size or cost threshold.

Between 1999 and 2010, Enbridge’s operations in North America had more than 800 spills that dumped nearly 6.8 million gallons of oil, according to a NWF report. In July 2010, more than 1 million gallons spilled into the Kalamazoo River system from the company’s Line 6B due to external corrosion after protective tape coating detached from its surface.

Experts say the complex currents in the Straits of Mackinac could make a spill there catastrophic, spreading oil rapidly and across long distances in Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. It could pollute miles of shoreline, harm countless species and habitats, and cause billions of dollars in damages. Cleanup would also be extremely difficult.

At a rally at Prudential Plaza last week, activists gathered to raise awareness about the pipeline issues beyond Wisconsin and Michigan. They are hoping to build more support to pressure the Biden administration to shut down Line 5.

Strikingly lifelike cardboard fish and birds, including red-eyed loons and colorful trout, sat atop the heads of rally participants. Seventy-seven-year-old Susan Simensky Bietila grabbed a megaphone: “The pipeline is as old as I am,” said the longtime activist-artist from Milwaukee.

“The coating is coming off, the turbulent water is washing away the anchoring to the ground. People have been fighting to protect the water there,” she said. “And we will not allow Canadian companies and multinational corporations to turn the Upper Midwest into a resource extraction disaster zone.”

Russ Bennett traveled to Chicago for the rally from Madison with the climate action group 350 Wisconsin. He wore a pumpkinseed hat, made by the group’s art collective.”These creatures are all counting on us to do the right thing,” he said.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, spearheading legal action to decommission Line 5, has repeatedly called it a “ticking time bomb.” In 2020, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer revoked an easement allowing for the operation of the dual pipelines in the straits — where the 30-inch diameter of Line 5 splits into two 20-inch pipes. She called them an “unreasonable risk” and said the company had violated its terms by ignoring structural problems at the site.

However, Whitmer’s action does not preclude Enbridge from moving forward with its current plan to build a tunnel under the straits for a new pipeline, which opponents say would continue to pose a risk to the health of the Great Lakes, especially if the current line remains unprotected during construction under the lakebed.

Duffy said a tunnel at the straits would make “what has always been a safe pipeline even safer.” He said Enbridge’s public opinion polls indicate support for the tunnel project from 70% of Michiganders; 33 counties have passed resolutions in its favor.

Line 5 supplies almost 40% of the crude oil used at refineries in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Canada. That oil, as well as natural gas transported by the pipeline, is turned into propane and used by millions of people for cooking, heating homes and drying farm crops, Duffy said.

“Some of these refineries have said themselves they would likely close entirely; others would be forced to severely cut back on their production and could become non-competitive. This would cause refined product shortages and price hikes throughout the region,” he said. “Thousands of pipeline jobs and jobs at refineries and other processing facilities and industries are reliant on the continued operation of Line 5, as made clear by major labor unions and the government of Canada.”

Opponents say decommissioning Line 5 would not lead to propane shortages or significant price increases; the Sierra Club has noted that propane can be transported by rail or truck, and Nessel says prices would only go up by 5 cents to 11 cents a gallon. Expert testimony in court has indicated increases in Michigan and Wisconsin might be less than 1 cent per gallon.

Bad River Band

Communities in territories crossed or bordered by Line 5, such as the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians in northern Wisconsin, lead efforts to protect the land and water resources that have sustained humans and wildlife across the Great Lakes region for generations.

After his family relocated from northern to central Wisconsin when he was 6 years old, Joe Bates returned to the Bad River reservation almost every weekend and each summer. There, his uncles taught him how to hunt, fish, harvest wild rice and coexist with land and water.

“That’s what I learned how to do here. That’s what I taught my children,” said Bates, a tribal elder with the Bad River Band. “My oldest son continues to harvest balsam. He harvests pine cones, and he also takes his children with him. They helped him, just like when (he was) young.”

Bates also attended last week’s rally in Chicago.

Members of the Bad River Band feel the long-standing presence of a Line 5 segment, which traverses 12 miles of their land, threatens their way of life. As erosion moves the course of the Bad River, it risks unearthing portions of the buried pipeline.

According to a federal complaint by the tribe, the river was 320 feet from Line 5 in 1963. By 2020, Bates said, it was no more than a dozen feet away.

“We don’t need a flood,” he said, “a 4-inch rainfall could very well take that pipeline out.”