U.S. House committee findings: Sixteen hundred miles away, Enbridge Energy technicians scratched their heads for 18 hours

Enbridge restarted the pipeline twice before finally shutting it.

There was a leak in the gas line to our clothes dryer last year. We called Consumers Energy Co.

Their truck was there within minutes. The guy’s Deteco-machine found gas in the house and within minutes another truck with two guys and a gal screeched up and began unloading gear like a Marine Corps assault team.

The dug holes, took out ceiling tiles and combed every nook and cranny in the place. At one point they were suggesting that a backhoe might be called shortly to claw around our foundation in a frenzied treasure hunt.

Thankfully, they found the problem and shut it off. Then they noticed our outdoor gas meter was outdated. In a few minutes they’d torn off the old one and installed a new one – a procedure that involved an awesomely deafening few seconds of high-pressure gas blasting out of the pipe as he swapped meters. Think jet engine. And no smoking. Then they were gone with dark warning of what might become of us if I turned that gas line back on before getting it repaired.

It was professional, efficient, and fast – and I remain impressed to this day with how seriously these folks took their jobs when safety was at issue.

How is it then, that when the alarms detected Enbridge Energy Co.’s oil leak in Marshall, that it took technicians monitoring the problem 1,600 miles away in Alberta, Canada 18 hours to shut valves? 
That and other vexing issues are raised in a U.S. House committee report reconstructing the timeline of the oil spill. The Free Press’ Todd Spangler wrote this excellent account.

Folks who want to keep abreast of the latest on the Enbridge Oil spill have numerous places to do so…..one reason why I haven’t written more about it, others are doing it much better than I could.

But this committee report needs noting. It paints a picture of a company inexcusably out of touch with the infrastructure of its pipeline system – 1,600 miles away – infrastructure critical to maintaining the safety of Michiganders.

By the time one 911 caller told an operator that “the entire downtown smells like gas” Enbridge was still pumping oil into the water and scratching their heads. Or some other part of their anatomy.

A libertarian-minded friend told me, he hopes the disaster will be a wake up call to other companies to make sure their safety protocols are as close to infallible as humanly possible.

I hope so too. But wouldn’t mind our regulators kicking the backsides of violators too.
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Why don't journalists do good watchdog reporting? Because no one cares until there's anthrax in the mail or oil in your fishin' hole

I wrote a story for the Detroit Free Press once about the offbeat work of a state agency whose responsibilities included protecting Michigan citizens from chemical and biological terrorist attacks.

Editors hated the story. The believed it was needlessly hysterical and legitimized the work of a state agency that was wasting taxpayer money on a threat so remote to be laughable. They chopped it up and buried it on an inside page.

Then Al Quaeda’s 9/11/01 attacks and subsequent anthrax attacks sent shock and panic through the country. The obscure scientists in the story were suddenly Very Important People and the notion of exploring our readiness against chemical attacks suddenly seemed urgent and newsworthy.

A similar dynamic occurs with every high-profile disaster. No one – editors, citizens, politicians – no one, gives much of a rip about stories examining our readiness for disasters until the disasters strike. Then, it’s a free for all of blame and second guessing.

A good journalistic investigation might have unearthed – before the Gulf Oil Spill -- a pattern of corner cutting and noncompliance on the part of BP. But it would have been a real sleep inducer. No one would have cared.

Likewise, someone might have written or broadcast a story – before Michigan’s Kalamazoo River system oil spill -- noting that Enbridge Energy Partners has been warned about corrosion in their oil pipeline. Such a story might have quoted Hugh McDiarmid Jr., spokesman for an environmental group saying : “We believe corrosion in the pipeline needs to be corrected immediately, or we are courting disaster.”

It would have only been read by geeks and zealots with online identities like BAD*SSMUTHA, NO_TYRANNY, and AYNRAND. They would have written anonymous comments: “take your hippie ass and your Prius and move to Red China you spoiled jerk from the People’s Republic of Ann Arborstan” or “you’re an environmental wacko trying to kill the last jobs in Michigan that Two Penny Jenny Grandmole hasn’t already!.”

I thought of this dynamic the other day when I spoke with a reporter working on a story about oil pipelines in Michigan that may be completely unregulated. Apparently, there are certain sections of intrastate oil pipe that are not regulated or inspected for safety by any state or local agency. If there’s a federal agency that’s supposed to regulate them, they haven’t done so for decades.

But the reporter told me the story may never get reported. It would take a good month of digging for a story that’s complex and raises warning flags, but wouldn’t get much reader reaction even in the wake of the recent oil calamities. Meanwhile, there are plenty of stories that will get readers talking that can be reported in a week, a day, or a few hours.

There’s a lot of moaning about how the media doesn’t cover substantive issues anymore. But journalists know from experience that sober, lengthy analyses of important issues don’t sell newspapers, don't drive up viewership and never gets much feedback from readers. Until the public cares, media executives, editors and advertisers aren’t going to either.

Usually, sadly, that takes a disaster.

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The episode where Frank Beckmann assures us the Kalamazoo oil spill is no big deal, and that we shouldn't be mean to Enbridge Energy because they have people helping clean it up.

Oil trapped against a boom on the Kalamazoo River Friday

So by now you probably know that Enbridge Energy Partners had a little malfunction with one of their oil pipelines, one that federal regulators repeatedly warned the company about. Something like 1 million gallons of crude was dumped into the Kalamazoo River system where it has coated banks, choked off wetlands and disrupted the lives and economies in numerous local communities.

I was down there Friday checking it out, and it’s a God awful disaster. Yes, disaster. Even though WJR’s Frank Beckmann has declared it much ado about nothing primarily because no one has died. Frank says we shouldn’t condemn Enbridge because they have workers cleaning it up, and that government red tape is to blame for the problem. Frank, on his radio show, also beat up on the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment because they didn’t have enough respirators to go around to their people doing sampling. Of course, it was the right wing cavalry in the legislature that has stripped the agency of nearly 75 percent of its general fund money in the past decade, vilified it as a job-killing band of regulatory thugs and even tried to eliminate the division within the agency that responded to the oil spill! And we wonder why they don’t have an adequate equipment budget?

(There was a time when Frank had a mind of his own and wasn’t afraid to use it, but he’s increasingly is content to only parrot Rush Limbaugh these days.)

Since the whole media world is covering the spill, I’m content point out that there is a plethora of excellent coverage happening, most notably at my alma mater the Detroit Free Press where Todd Spangler and Jennifer Dixon did an excellent job Sunday of explaining the regulatory environment that lets the Enbridges of the world take calculated risks with the world’s greatest freshwater ecosystem. (An exception is the Freep’s web headline last night, cheerily pointing out that half the 1 million gallons has been collected, but failing to note that each remaining gallon gets tougher as it settles into wetlands, smothering bacteria and plankton and choking off the entire bottom of the food chain).

The Environmental Protection Agency is taking the lead on the response to the spill.
(EPA, another band of job-killing thugs except when, well….when it become apparent maybe polluters shouldn't actually be allowed to regulate themselves)

Meanwhile, the National Wildlife Federation has released a report noting that Michigan ranks 9th highest in oil spills in recent years.

The next time Frank Beckmann decides to declare a disaster zone a non-disaster, I suggest he do a show from the region where can talk to the people I did -- the lifelong hunter and fisherman near tears at the despoiling of his cherished river valley; the campground owner forced to simply shut down her business at the peak of summer season; or the golf course superintendent told not to use his sprinkler system that draws directly from the river lest the fairways get coated with oil.

These are the people who will still be dealing with this spill in six weeks, six months and six year -- long after the TV cameras and most of the politicians have moved on. 
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