Environment
Opposition to pipeline spreading across state
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By JASMINE WATTS
Capital News Service
LANSING — Some Michigan communities are calling on state officials to shut down an aging oil pipeline between the state’s Upper and Lower peninsulas, even though they lack jurisdiction in the matter. Line 5 is a 63-year-old oil pipeline owned by Enbridge Inc., a private Canadian company, at the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet. Line 5 now operates at more than 80 percent of its original design capacity. Environmentalists say they are afraid it will rupture. A 2014 University of Michigan study called it the worst possible place to have an oil spill in the Great Lakes.