It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, December 31, 2023
UK
#CeasefireNow – a New Year’s Message from John McDonnell Labour MP
“After witnessing last night the pictures on our TVs of more Palestinian children being killed in Gaza, I don’t believe any politician’s New Year message is relevant unless it calls for an end to the massacre of these innocent children & calls for an immediate ceasefire.”John McDonnell MP
Please find below the video and text of a message from John McDonnell, which he posted on his social media accounts on 31 December, emphasising support for the international calls for a #Ceasefire now, and peace and justice for Palestine.
“It’s a long standing tradition for political and religious leaders to put out a New Year’s message setting out their plans and hopes for the new year.
This is accompanied by wishing people a Happy New Year.
After witnessing last night the pictures on our television screens of more Palestinian children being killed in Gaza, I don’t believe any politician’s or religious leader’s New Year message is relevant unless it calls for an end to the massacre of these innocent children and calls for an immediate ceasefire.
And of course, that includes the release of the Israeli hostages.
Without a demand from the international community for a ceasefire the world leaders are in effect tacitly giving permission for what many legal experts consider war crimes to continue.
So yes, I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year but above all else I want to wish for peace, an end to the bombing and killing whether it be in Gaza, Israel or Ukraine.
Let’s try and make 2024 the year we learn to make peace again not war.”
Featured image: John McDonnell speaks at the Britain is Broken rally at London’s Trafalgar Square on Saturday 12th January 2018. Photo credit: Garry Knight under CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Commemorating the 40-year anniversary when workers faced the sack for being in a union
In January, hundreds of trade unionists are expected to march at a rally in Cheltenham marking the 40th anniversary of the GCHQ trade union ban.
Organised jointly by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, the march will commemorate a significant event in the movement’s struggle against a hostile, anti-union political climate – whilst drawing parallels to the current struggle for workers’ rights.
In 1984 Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government banned trade unions at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), citing security concerns. Staff were forced to quit their union, however fourteen refused and, as a result, were sacked.
The Civil and Public Services Association (CPAS), which pre-dating the PCS union, entered a relentless campaign to reinstate them, with speakers attending more than 350 events and organising annual marches through the town centre for 13 years so the issue was kept in the public consciousness.
Eventually, once a Labour government came in, their persistence and defiance paid off when the ban was lifted in 1997 and they were able to return to work.
This marked an important victory in the movement, the fourteen GCHQ workers had stood up for their basic human right to collectively organise, putting their jobs on the line for their principles in a remarkable act of resistance. However today, workers are once again facing union attacks that threaten their jobs.
The Cheltenham rally was confirmed following a major meeting of trade unions against the Tories Minimum Service Levels (Strikes) Bill, the first special congress called by the TUC in over 40 years, with the last in 1982 over Margaret Thatcher’s anti-union legislation.
TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said the march will represent union “defiance” against historic and current attacks on workers’ rights.
“We will once again show a Conservative government that the full force of the union movement stands behind any worker sacked for trade union activity,” rallied Nowak.
“On Saturday 27 January, 40 years on, unions will march through Cheltenham to commemorate the GCHQ victory and to demonstrate continued defiance against minimum service level regulations and attacks on the right to strike.”
Mark Serwotka echoed his call that the message today “is the same as it was in 1984 – we shall fight this injustice for however long it takes.”
Serwotka said: “Margaret Thatcher’s decision to ban trade unions at GCHQ was part of her attack on unions in general but these workers weren’t prepared to accept it.
“Their principled decision not to give up their trade union membership saw them pay a massive price.
“Now, forty years on, as we celebrate their courage and determination, a different Conservative government is attacking trade union rights – this time they’re introducing Minimum Service Levels in a naked attack on our right to strike.”
The rally will take place in Montpellier Gardens, Cheltenham at 12pm, 27 January. Among the confirmed speakers are Mark Serworka, Paul Nowak and UNISON new general secretary Christina McAnea, with more expected. Four of the surviving members of the original campaign and their families will also be attending as guests of honour.
Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward, focusing on trade unions and environmental issues
More than 50,000 Americans died by suicide in 2023 — more than any year on record
NBC News
Dec 31, 2023 #Health #MentalHealth #MTP
The U.S. surgeon general calls mental health the “defining health crisis of our time.” On a special edition of Meet the Press, Kristen Welker dives into the growing crisis and how to solve it.
Homelessness at a record high in US as people struggle to prove they exist
ByPetula Dvorak December 31, 2023 —
Washington: He traced the letters of his name with his finger in the night air: “I -B-A-N-E-Z.”
Rafael Ibanez, 54, has been repeating his name, spelling it out, for government bureaucrats for at least two months, since the backpack containing all his identification papers was stolen.
He’s on his makeshift front porch, a scavenged folding chair next to his shelter, garbage bags hung on crisscrossing ropes. Across the street, little girls in glittery, blue dresses were giddy at the Kennedy Centre’s Opera House for opening night of the Disney musical, Frozen.
One of the men living in an encampment near Washington’s Kennedy Center is Rafael Ibanez, 54, whose identification papers were stolen with his backpack several months ago.
CREDIT:PETULA DVORAK/THE WASHINGTON POST
One city, two worlds in the nation’s capital.
Ibanez is part of one of the fastest-growing populations in America - the homeless.
Last week, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development released its Annual Homeless Assessment Report showing that 12 per cent more people were experiencing homelessness this year compared to last. And the number – about 650,000 – is the highest ever since they’ve been keeping count.
“Homelessness is solvable and should not exist in the United States,” said HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge.
Indeed. And yet here we are, an entirely man-made calamity.
Ibanez worked as a landscaper and construction worker in Arizona for decades, he said, then work dried up and he followed a family member north, where he hoped jobs would be easier and more abundant.
His backpack and identity were stolen when he was in Manhattan. So he came to DC, as many do, in the belief that proximity to the federal government would ensure they get assistance and benefits quicker.
A decent number of the folks in DC’s tent villages are like him. Veterans who want their benefits, immigrants who want to become citizens and folks whose Social Security benefits were messed up believe their answers lie in the nation’s capital.
The numbers in Washington are also rising, with an 11.6 per cent increase this year over last, according to the DC government. There are about 5000 people without a home in the nation’s capital.
This was the case with one unforgettable woman I met in 2016, Wanda Witter.
After battling Social Security for years, hauling three suitcases stuffed with paperwork to prove her case, the then 80-year-old woman who was homeless until the week we met got one of the biggest I-told-you-so’s that a person can hope for.
The government admitted the mistake and deposited $US99,999 ($145,000) into her bank account. She got a cute apartment. One of the encampments near Foggy Bottom in Washington is notable for the giant, American flag one man uses to protect his belongings.
CREDIT:PETULA DVORAK/THE WASHINGTON POST
Ibanez has been living outside the Kennedy Centre for two months now. He said it was the first time he’s lived rough, and it’s getting colder. He believes that if he could just get someone in the federal government to believe who he is, he can come inside, too. But the visits to offices haven’t helped.
There are facts of his story I’m missing and I’m sure many are hard.
But there he was this week, among a small tent city of the forgotten, trying to stay warm, eat and get someone to acknowledge his existence so he can file for food stamps and housing benefits.
This is getting more difficult in America – and notably in DC – because the nonprofits that step in to help people, which have long been underfunded and understaffed, are running up against a deepening challenge: a nationwide decline in volunteers.
The number of Americans who raised their hands to volunteer in the United States dropped about 7 percentage points between September 2020 and September 2021, to the lowest it’s been since do-gooders work has been tracked in the early 2000s, according to a January report released by the Census Bureau and AmeriCorps, the federal agency for national service and volunteerism.
“There have always been organisations that have struggled to find volunteers, but it’s now it’s a huge problem,” Nathan Dietz, research director at the Do Good Institute in the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, who co-wrote a study released last month exploring factors influencing volunteering and charitable giving in the United States and told my colleague, Joe Heim.
Plus, these remaining folks who help the homeless are being flooded because of this sad fact in the yearly count - the steep increase in homeless Americans is largely made up of folks who are unhoused for the first time in their lives.
It’s a domino effect - it’s hard to buy a house, so the renter market is flooded and rents are growing.
“Millions of households are now priced out of homeownership, grappling with housing cost burdens, or lacking shelter altogether, including a disproportionate share of people of colour,” according to a report by the Joint Centre for Housing Studies at Harvard University.
These aren’t just the folks battling mental illness or addictions, as former president and current candidate Donald Trump would like you to believe as he tromps through America with dictatorial declarations of mass roundups and arrests of the homeless and immigrants.
Between fiscal years 2021 and 2022, the number of people who became newly homeless increased by 25 per cent, according to HUD data.
“This rise in first-time homelessness is likely attributable to a combination of factors, including but not limited to, the recent changes in the rental housing market and the winding down of pandemic protections and programs focused on preventing evictions and housing loss,” the HUD announcement said.
These are folks thrown to the curb because the rent is simply too darn high.
The eviction protections that helped renters during the pandemic are gone. And the people already on the edge before covid paralysed the nation are falling off, according to the Harvard report.
Ibanez wishes he could pay rent again.
For now, he gets takeout boxes that diners leaving Georgetown restaurants give him. Some of the folks who rack their rental bikes next to his encampment give him their coats or blankets. He’s seeing more of this now, close to the holidays.
“People are good to me,” he said. “They try.”
Not hard enough.
The Washington Post
Oil, Chemical Firms Pay Millions to Fix Portland Harbor
December 31, 2023on Oil, Chemical Firms Pay Millions to Fix Portland Harbor
PORTLAND, Oregon, December 31, 2023 (ENS) – People who eat fish that live year-round in Oregon’s Lower Willamette River are taking a big risk, as these fish contain levels of toxic polychlorinated biphenyls high enough to harm health, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been warning for decades.
In November, the Justice Department added two settlements in federal court reflecting agreements among Tribal, state and federal natural resource trustees and over 20 potentially responsible parties, PRPs, to clean up what is now the Portland Harbor Superfund Site, designated in the year 2000. Past settlement agreements are online here.
The Portland Harbor Superfund site reached a key milestone on January 6, 2017 when the Environmental Protection Agency released its Record of Decision, the final plan for cleanup.
The Portland Harbor Superfund site is a 10-mile stretch of the lower Willamette River between the Broadway Bridge and the southern tip of Sauvie Island.
Approximately 150 parties are considered potentially responsible for the contamination, including some of the largest corporations in the United States, even one – Schnitzer Steel Industries, Inc. now doing business as Radius Recycling – that has been recognized for its environmental and climate action work.
One of the 150 potentially responsible parties is Schnitzer Steel Industries, which this year rebranded as Radius Recycling, in the business of buying and selling recycled metals around the world. In November, TIME magazine named the company to the inaugural TIME100 Climate List, which aims to recognize 100 innovative leaders working to expedite climate action. Earlier this year, Radius was named the Most Sustainable Company in the World by Corporate Knights and included on TIME’s List of the 100 Most Influential Companies of 2023.
Other polluters named in the Portland Harbor Superfund site cleanup agreements already filed in court are:
– Daimler Trucks North America;
– Vigor Industrial, the largest ship repair and modernization operation in the region;
– Cascade General, which owns and operates Portland Shipyard;
– NW Natural, a natural gas distributor;
– Arkema Inc., a chemical manufacturer based near Paris, France;
– Bayer Crop Science Inc., a German multinational corporation which produces herbicides, and insecticides that the 2020 EPA Administrative Settlement court documents linked to “cancer risks and noncancer health hazards from exposures to a set of chemicals in sediments, surface water, groundwater seeps, and fish tissue from samples collected at the Site.”
– General Electric Company, a New York company that has polluted surface water, groundwater, sediment, and fish tissue with 64 contaminants of concern, including PCBs, PAHs, dioxins and furans, as well as DDT and its metabolites DDD and DDE (collectively, DDX);
– oil companies Chevron U.S.A. Inc., Kinder Morgan Liquids Terminals LLC, McCall Oil and Chemical Corporation, Phillips 66 Company, and Shell Oil Company, Company, BP Products North America Inc., and ExxonMobil Corporation;
– towboating and barging company Brix Maritime
– Union Pacific Railroad Company
– FMC Corporation, an American herbicide and fungicide manufacturer based in Pennsylvania
The settlement agreements, with an estimated restoration value of $33.2 million, require the potentially responsible parties to pay cash damages or purchase credits in projects to restore salmon and other natural resources that were lost due to contamination released from their facilities into the Willamette River.
This settlement includes more than $600,000 in damages for the public’s lost recreational use of the river, and restoration and monitoring of culturally significant plants and animals.
Portland Harbor Superfund Site, River Mile 11 East (Photo courtesy EPA Region 10)
The settlement includes additional funds to cover costs paid by the Portland Harbor Natural Resource Trustee Council for assessing the harm to the injured natural resources.
The Trustee Council is made up of representatives from the Five Tribes: the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon, Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon, and the Nez Perce Tribe, along with representatives of the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the State of Oregon.
“This settlement represents years of hard work by the Portland Harbor natural resource trustees and responsible parties who cooperated to restore the harm caused by those parties’ contamination. The resulting restoration projects funded by these agreements will provide permanent ecological benefits to help restore the biodiversity of the Willamette River system,” said Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division.
The Five Tribes “wholly support this settlement” the Tribes said in a statement. “Contamination has uniquely affected tribal members because of their cultural use of and relationship with affected natural resources in and around the Portland Harbor Superfund Site. The Five Tribes believe the collaborative process of this settlement represents the best path forward for restoring Portland Harbor natural resources for the benefit of both current and future generations.”
Curt Melcher heads the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. 2016 (Photo courtesy OregonLive)
“The trustees are very pleased that the responsible parties in this settlement have advanced restoration over litigation. The large-scale restoration projects facilitated by this settlement will help address the most important habitat needs of fish and wildlife injured by contamination in Portland Harbor,” said Director Curt Melcher of Oregon’s Department of Fish and Wildlife.
“We will continue our settlement discussions with the remaining responsible parties who are participating in the early settlement initiative so we can achieve additional permanent restoration of natural resources,” Melcher said. “Partnering with restoration project developers has already produced on-the-ground restoration even prior to today’s settlement.”
Restoration Credits, a Novelty With Benefits
The use of restoration credits in four natural resource projects created in partnership with private developers is a novel and critical feature of the settlement, the Justice Department said.
Restoration credits are like ecological “shares” in a restoration project, and the natural resource trustees decide how many “shares” each project is worth. Defendants in the settlement can purchase restoration credits from the restoration project developers instead of paying cash to resolve the ecological injury portion of their liability.
Using this approach at Portland Harbor has produced on-the-ground restoration sooner and at less cost than traditional cash-only settlements.
The four restoration projects selling restoration credits – Alder Creek, Harborton, Linnton Mill and Rinearson Natural Area – provide habitat for juvenile Chinook salmon listed under the Endangered Species Act, and they are of cultural significance to the Five Tribes.
The projects will restore habitat for other fish and wildlife injured by contamination in Portland Harbor, species such as bald eagles, mink and lamprey, as well as tribally significant native plants like camas, wapato and sweetgrass.
“Cleaning up and restoring the Portland Harbor is important for all Oregonians, but it will also be one small step towards righting the many injustices done to the Nez Perce Tribe,” said Courtney Johnson, executive director and staff attorney with the Portland-based Crag Law Center.
Construction is complete and habitat development is underway at all four projects, which are expected to provide ecological benefits in perpetuity, will be permanently protected from development and will receive long-term stewardship.
Collectively, the restoration value in these projects is the largest natural resource credit bank at any Superfund Site in the country, the EPA explains.
The agreements result from an early settlement collaboration between the natural resource trustees at the Portland Harbor Superfund Site and a group of PRPs who participated in that effort.
Negotiations are continuing with other PRPs that also are participating in the trustees’ early settlement initiative. If the trustees reach agreements in those ongoing negotiations, they could include additional cash settlements or restoration credit purchases in the four restoration projects.
On behalf of the trustees on the Trustee Council, the U.S. Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division’s Environmental Enforcement Section filed the complaint and lodged the proposed consent decrees in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon.
The proposed decrees resolve the natural resource damages allegations of the United States, Oregon and the Five Tribes for releases of contamination from the PRPs’ identified facilities. Alleged violations are of Section 107 of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act; the Oil Pollution Act and the Clean Water Act.
The Superfund site is located along the lower reach of the Willamette River in Portland, and extends from river mile 1.9 to 11.8. While the site is industrialized, it is within a region where commercial, residential, recreational, and agricultural uses exist. The site includes marine terminals, manufacturing, other commercial operations, public facilities, parks, and open spaces.
This lower reach was once a shallow, meandering portion of the Willamette River but has been redirected and channelized with filling and dredging. A federally maintained navigation channel, extending nearly bank-to-bank in some areas, doubles the natural depth of the river and allows transit of large ships into the harbor. Along the river bank are overwater piers and berths, port terminals and slips, and other engineered features.
Invertebrates, fishes, birds, amphibians, and mammals, including some protected by the Endangered Species Act, use habitats within and along the river. The river is also an important rearing site and pathway for migration of salmon and lamprey. Recreational fisheries for salmon, bass, sturgeon, crayfish, among others, are still active within the lower Willamette River.
The greatest risk to humans is connected to eating the fish that live there year-round, like bass and carp. Salmon and fish that pass through the river to the ocean are safe to eat, the EPA advises
Seawalls are used to control periodic flooding as most of the original wetlands bordering the Willamette in the Portland Harbor area have been filled. Some river bank areas and adjacent parcels have been abandoned and allowed to revegetate, and beaches have formed along some modified shorelines due to natural processes.
The settlement is subject to a 45-day public comment period and final court approval. It is available for viewing here. Please refer to the upcoming Federal Register notice for instructions on submitting any public comments on the settlement. More information is available on the Portland Harbor Natural Resource Trustee Council website.
Featured image: A view of the Portland Harbor Superfund site with Mount Hood, Oregon’s tallest mountain at 11,249 feet, in the background. (Photo courtesy U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)
Waste segregation bins are seen in the campsite on the White Earth Nation Reservation near
Waubun, Minnesota, on June 5, 2021.KEREM YUCEL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
The Line 5 oil pipeline that snakes through Wisconsin and Michigan won a key permit this month: pending federal studies and approvals, Canada-based Enbridge Energy will build a new section of pipeline and tunnel underneath the Great Lakes despite widespread Indigenous opposition. You may not have heard of Line 5, but over the next few years, the controversy surrounding the 645-mile pipeline is expected to intensify.
The 70-year-old pipeline stretches from Superior, Wisconsin, through Michigan to Sarnia, Ontario, transporting up to 540,000 gallons of oil and natural gas liquids per day. It’s part of a network of more than 3,000 miles of pipelines that the company operates throughout the U.S. and Canada, including the Line 3 pipeline in Minnesota where hundreds of opponents were arrested or cited in 2021 for protesting construction, including citizens and members of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians and White Earth Band of Ojibwe
Now, Enbridge Energy, with the support of the Canadian government, is seeking approvals to build a new $500 million conduit to replace an underwater section of Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac, while facing lawsuits backed by dozens of Indigenous nations as well as the state of Michigan.
A key concern is the aging pipeline’s risk to the Great Lakes, which represent more than a fifth of the world’s fresh surface water. Environmental concerns are so great that three years ago, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer ordered Enbridge’s dual pipelines that run for 4 miles at the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac to cease operations.
“The state is revoking the easement for violation of the public trust doctrine, given the unreasonable risk that continued operation of the dual pipelines poses to the Great Lakes,” the governor’s office said at the time.
The move came just a year after the Bad River Band tribal nation filed a lawsuit against Enbridge regarding another, separate section of Line 5 in Wisconsin located across 12 miles of the Bad River reservation. The pipeline had been installed in 1953 and, at the time, had received easements to do so from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
But the easements expired, and in a court filing, the tribal nation said the company “has continued to operate the pipeline as if it has an indefinite entitlement to do so,” despite federal law that bans the renewal of expired right-of-way permits on Indian land and would require Enbridge to obtain new permits and approvals from the Band.
The Bad River won a key victory last summer when a Wisconsin judge ruled that the company must shut down the portion of its pipeline that trespasses on the reservation by 2026.
Enbridge has resisted calls to cease Line 5 operations. Instead, the company contends that it has the right to continue operating there, citing a 1992 agreement with the Band, and is planning to reroute the pipeline while appealing the Wisconsin judge’s decision. The company also argues that building a new pipeline 100 feet below the lake bed through the Straits of Mackinac will virtually eliminate the chance of a spill.
“Line 5 poses little risk to natural and cultural resources, nor does it endanger the way of life of Indigenous communities,” company spokesperson Ryan Duffy said. “Line 5 is operated safely and placing the line in a tunnel well below the lake bed at the Straits of Mackinac will only serve to make a safe pipeline safer.”
To that end, Enbridge successfully appeared before the Michigan Public Service Commission, the state’s top energy regulator, this month and got permission to build a new concrete tunnel beneath the channel connecting Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. The commission cited the need for the light crude oil and natural gas liquids that the pipeline transports, and said other alternatives like driving, trucking or hauling by barge or rail would increase the risk of a spill.
The commission’s approval contradicts Governor Whitmer’s efforts to shut down the pipeline. In the wake of the permit, the governor’s office told reporters the state commission is “independent.” Both of the governor’s appointees on the board voted in favor of the permit.
The approval doesn’t mean that the project will proceed, but it is encouraging for the company as it seeks federal clearance. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is in the process of putting together a draft environmental impact statement for the project. That document isn’t expected to be published until spring 2025.
In the meantime, Line 5 has gotten lots of support from the government of Canada, where Enbridge Energy is based. The government has repeatedly invoked a 1977 energy treaty between the U.S. and Canada to defend the pipeline.
That’s frustrating to Indigenous peoples who have seen their treaty rights repeatedly violated.
“What we’re simply trying to continue to preserve and protect is an Indigenous way of life, which is the same thing our ancestors tried to preserve and protect when they first entered into those treaty negotiations,” said Whitney Gravelle, chairperson of the Bay Mills Indian Community, one of numerous tribal nations opposing Line 5.
The Straits are also the site of Anishinaabe creation stories, the waters from which the Great Turtle emerged to create Turtle Island, what is currently called North America. Gravelle said that maintaining clean lakes where Indigenous people can fish is about more than just the right to fish. It’s about the continuation of culture.
“It’s about being able to learn from your parents and your elders about what fishing means to your people, whether it be in ceremony or in tradition or in oral storytelling, and then understanding the role that that fish plays in your community,” she said.
Last summer, José Francisco Calí Tzay, United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, called for suspending the pipeline’s operations “until the free, prior, and informed consent of the Indigenous Peoples affected is secured.” Free, prior, and informed consent is a right guaranteed to Indigenous Peoples under international law that says governments must consult Indigenous nations in good faith to obtain their consent before undertaking projects that affect their land and resources — consent that Bad River, for instance, has refused to give.
“Canada is advocating for the pipeline to continue operations, following the decision of a Parliamentary Committee that did not hear testimony from the affected Indigenous Peoples,” Calí Tzay wrote, adding the country’s support for the pipeline contradicts its international commitments to mitigate climate change in addition to the risk of a “catastrophic spill.”
Part of what makes Line 5 such a flashpoint is the importance of the Great Lakes and Enbridge’s spotty environmental record. As the Guardian reported last month, the Great Lakes “stretch out beyond horizons, collectively covering an area as large as the U.K. and providing drinking water for a third of all Canadians and one in 10 Americans.”
In 2010, two separate pipelines run by Enbridge ruptured, spilling more than a million gallons of oil between them into rivers in Michigan and Illinois. The Environmental Protection Agency found that Enbridge was at fault not only for failing to upkeep the pipeline but also for restarting the pipeline after alarms went off without checking whether it failed. The company eventually reached a $177 million settlement with federal regulators over the disaster.
A 2017 National Wildlife Federation analysis found that Line 5 has leaked more than a million gallons on 29 separate occasions. The company said just five of these instances were outside of Enbridge facilities, and that no spills have occurred in the Straits of Mackinac or on the Bad River Reservation. Still, the section of the pipeline on the floor of the Straits of Mackinac has been dented by boat anchors dropped in the lakes, including from Enbridge-contracted vessels.
Despite Indigenous peoples’ concerns, Line 5 continues to gain momentum, in part because of the amount of energy it supplies to the U.S. and Canada and the countries’ continued dependence on fossil fuels. While the international community agreed to curb fossil fuels this month at COP28, there’s no agreed-upon timeline for actually doing so, and the consumer demand for affordable energy remains high, especially in light of inflation driving the prices of food and housing.
Meanwhile, more than 60 tribal nations, including every federally recognized tribe in Michigan, have said the pipeline poses “an unacceptable risk of an oil spill into the Great Lakes.”
“The Straits of Mackinac are a sacred wellspring of life and culture for tribal nations in Michigan and beyond,” the nations wrote in an amicus brief supporting a lawsuit challenging the pipeline.
To Gravelle from the Bay Mills Indian Community, the issue is deeply personal and goes beyond maintaining access to clean water and the ability to fish safely. Fishing is deeply intertwined with her peoples’ culture. When a baby is born, their first meal is fish, and when her people hold traditional ceremonies, they serve fish.
“Our traditions and who we are as a people are all wrapped up into what we do with fish,” Gravelle said. “Our relationship with the land and water is more important than any commercial value that could ever be realized from an oil pipeline.”
'Hard-Won Movement Victory': MVP Extension in NC Halved
"Mountain Valley Pipeline and its Southgate extension have been poorly conceived from the beginning, but today some of the communities in harm's way can breathe easier," said one campaigner.
Empty pipeline segments are shown on the property of Maury Johnson, a local farmer and landowner challenging the Mountain Valley Pipeline, on August 26, 2022 in Greenville, West Virginia. (Photo: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)
Frontline critics of the Mountain Valley Pipeline celebrated after Equitrans Midstream revealed Friday in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that the distance of the proposed Southgate extension project has been cut in half.
The partially completed MVP project—long delayed by legal battles until congressional Republicans and President Joe Biden included language to fast-track it in a debt limit deal earlier this year—is set to cross 303 miles of Virginia and West Virginia.
The MVP Southgate extension into North Carolina was supposed to be 75 miles, but the filing details plans for a redesigned 31-mile gas project that "would include substantially fewer water crossings and would not require a new compressor station."
Responding to the development Friday evening, Denali Nalamalapu, communications director of the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights Coalition, said that "despite receiving a free pass from the federal government, the MVP continues to crumble before our eyes. For nearly 10 years, communities along the route have declared this project impossible and deadly. Now, after meeting with its clients, we see further admission from MVP that they can't follow through with the foolhardy plan they set out with."
"This news is a win for the movement that will be celebrated by emboldened resistance in the new year."
"This news is a hard-won movement victory: Fewer people will be harmed now that the Southgate extension plan has been halved," she stressed. "The MVP has always known it poses a horrific danger to the communities along the route—but their bottom line takes priority."
"With this new plan, the company admits that fewer waterways will be harmed and a compressor station will be avoided, gesturing towards the devastating water pollution, air pollution, and health impacts it will and has caused," she added. "This news is a win for the movement that will be celebrated by emboldened resistance in the new year."
Appalachian Voices Virginia field coordinator Jessica Sims also welcomed the news as a win for communities on the frontlines of the climate-wrecking gas project.
"Mountain Valley Pipeline and its Southgate extension have been poorly conceived from the beginning, but today some of the communities in harm's way can breathe easier," Sims said Saturday. "We know these changes resulted from sustained opposition to this unnecessary methane gas pipeline and its Southgate extension, and our opposition continues."
The new Equitrans Midstream filing follows a pair of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) orders last week, one that allows MVP to raise gas transportation rates and another that extends the timeline to build the extension.
"The recent decision by FERC to extend Southgate's federal certificate was dependent on the pipeline having a contract with another entity to buy the gas," Appalachian Voices North Carolina program manager Ridge Graham noted Saturday.
"With a wholly new project that requires an 'open season' to find customers," Graham argued, "FERC should cancel the original Southgate Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity and send the developers back to the drawing board."
With MVP opponents "facing increased repression from the state and the companies behind the pipeline," another group that has spent years battling the project, Appalachians Against Pipelines, is calling for solidarity actions across the United States January 29-31 "to bring the fight to every company and bank involved."
