by John Atchison

Created on: August 02, 2010   Last Updated: August 03, 2010

You wonder when we as a country will ever learn.  More importantly, when will the U.S. government and agencies associated with it learn.  Well evidently the ugliness that has been the Gulf Coast spill for the past 3 months or so turned out not to be the lesson we had hoped.  On Sunday July 25, yet another oil spill was occurring that threatens to terrorize more United States waters and lands.  This time though, instead of being from the wicked witch of the south, this nasty spill is being conjured up in the upper reaches of the country in the north, threatening the waters of Lake Michigan and surrounding rivers.

The spill is not guaranteed to make it to Lake Michigan at this point, but is certainly not out of the realm of possibility either.  From its original starting point, which is characterized as being in an underground pipe near a pump station in Marshall, Michigan, the oil has seeped 35 miles downstream, where it is so far causing havoc on the Kalamazoo River and surrounding areas.  Already there have been evacuations of homes along the route for elevated levels of Benzene in the air, and there promises to be more if things are not stopped.  In fact, at this point, Lake Michigan lies only 80 miles away from the oil spill.

Sadly, this is another case of a company (Enbridge Inc. of Canada) that appears to have a bit of a shaky reputation trying to run their business with less than adequate equipment and parts for the job.  As well, a government agency, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PMHSA) also will seemingly be taking a hit for this accident as well.  How can that be? Well it appears that PMHSA sent a letter to the company in question letting them know that the system they had in place to monitor corrosion in its pipeline was not up to US standards.  No penalty or anything else was levied.  Next thing you know pop goes the pipeline and oil is on the loose.

What is different in this case is that Enbridge has already capped the leak, so no more oil is getting out as was the case in the fiasco in the Gulf.  However that does not stop what is already in the water supply, which estimates range from 800,000 to 1,000,000 gallons of oil.  However, according to politicians of the state, there is one thing way too similar for peoples liking, and that is the response time and cover-ups they believe are being

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