The state of Michigan has scrapped a risk study on Enbridge’s Line 5 and fired the contractor just a week before a first draft of the report was to be released.
The state Department of Environmental Quality said a conflict of interest on the part of one of the researchers called the independence of the study into question.
The DEQ’s Melody Kindraka says the researcher was working simultaneously on the Line 5 study and a project for Enbridge. The study was supposed to analyze the risks posed by the oil and gas pipeline that runs beneath the Straits of Mackinac. She says it’s not clear how this will effect decisions on the future of Line 5.
“We will have to re-assess our plans moving forward.”
“The independence and the integrity of this report is of the upmost importance to us, and that is why we wanted to move forward with the termination, so there would be not be any appearance of conflict.”
Environmental groups said the DEQ did the right thing to pull the study. But Lisa Wozniak of Clean Water Action says that should not delay a decision on Line 5.
“There’s enough to say to me that this pipeline needs to be shut down until we can actually prove that it’s safe. We cannot wait too much longer about the fate of Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline.”
A separate study on alternatives to Line 5 will be completed and made public next week.
