Monday, June 30 is the last day to submit comments to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers regarding its draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on a proposed tunnel for Enbridge's oil and natural gas liquids pipeline, Line 5.
The draft EIS by the Corps has been criticized as ignoring all the impacts that tunneling under the Straits of Mackinac could cause. It limited the impacts to the environmental damage to where the tunnel begins and ends.
The Corps also has been criticized for not including climate change effects of the fossil fuels piped through Line 5 to refineries and other users of the oil and natural gas liquids.
You can read an executive summary of the EIS here.
You can find the entire document here.
You can submit online comments here by June 30.
You can send written comments through the mail, but they must be postmarked by June 30. Here’s the address:
Line 5 Tunnel EIS
6501 Shady Grove Road, P.O. Box 10178
Gaithersburg, MD 20898
In its notice, the Corps said:
All submitted comments are included in the Detroit District’s administrative record, analyzed, and considered in the preparation of the Final EIS and other parts of the District’s review, as applicable.
President Donald Trump declared an "energy emergency," putting projects like the proposed Line 5 tunnel on a fast track. Usually a 60-day period for comments is allowed, but that time was cut in half, giving people only 30 days.
That seemed to prompt the Corps to issue this statement:
“Even when operating under emergency procedures, the Detroit District remains committed to following the NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) process,” said Lieutenant Colonel Wallace Bandeff.
