The settlement, reached between the EPA, U.S. Department of Justice and several related Enbridge companies, will resolve claims stemming from 2010 oil spills in Marshall, Michigan and Romeoville, Illinois. It was the worst onshore oil spill in United States history. Enbridge, who has also been the cause of numerous other oil spill accidents in recent history, has since spent more than billion cleaning up after their Kalamazoo River pipeline fiasco-a figure that does not include today’s settlement.
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“It is a strong statement of deterrent for others, but it’s also holding them accountable for the actions that they did here on site”, John Cruden, the Justice Department’s top attorney for environment and natural resources cases, said at a news conference on the banks of the Kalamazoo River in MI. “It requires Enbridge to take robust measures to improve the maintenance and monitoring of its Lakehead pipeline system, protecting lakes, rivers, land and communities across the upper Midwest”.
It was one of the largest inland oil spills in USA history, the Justice Department said in a press release issued Wednesday. It involves a 2010 pipeline rupture near Marshall that released an estimated 843,000 gallons of crude oil. Enbridge must also implement an extensive set of spill prevention requirements and leak detection capabilities in its network of 14 pipelines spanning almost 2,000 miles across seven states.
The second spill took place in September 2010 near Romeoville, Ill., and involved at least 6,437 barrels of oil that contaminated a tributary to the Des Plaines River.
Nearly six years to the day of the Enbridge Inc. oil spill into Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River, the final chapter was opened.
MI environmentalist Beth Wallace says the $62 million in penalties are a drop in the bucket for a big company like Enbridge.
Enbridge has estimated cleanup costs to be about $1.2 billion USA, including more than $551 million on response personnel and equipment and $227 million on environmental consultants.
“Flooding caused by heavy rains pushed the discharged oil over the river’s banks into its flood plains, and accelerated its migration over 35 miles downstream before it was contained”, the government statement described.
Cleanup work continues on the Kalamazoo River nearly a year after a spill near Marshall, Mi.
More than 1.1 million gallons of oil leaked from Enbridge’s 30-inch transmission line for more than 17 hours before the company was alerted by a third party of the environmental catastrophe that fouled Talmadge Creek and about 40 miles of the Kalamazoo River.
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The consent decree will take effect after a 30-day comment period and the approval by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of MI.
