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Enbridge Oil Spill in Michigan

On Sunday, July 25th 2010 an estimated 840,000 gallons of raw tar sands crude oil burst from a pipeline into a creek that feeds the Kalamazoo River. The oil spreading quickly in the flooded river, coating wildlife, saturating marshlands, backyards, businesses and farm land. The flow of the oil was contained before reaching Lake Michigan.

The raw tar sands oil disaster was caused by a break in a pipeline owned by Canadian tar sands giant, Enbridge. The company was cited for safety violations in the pipeline before it ruptured, and Enbridge was recently found responsible for safety violations in a 2007 pipeline explosion that killed two employees in Minnesota.

One of the largest tar sands oil spills ever in the Midwest, the disaster in the Kalamazoo River was one of many pipeline accidents in Michigan and one of hundreds of Enbridge oil spills in the last decade.

• NEW REPORT: Tar Sands Pipeline Safety Risks Highlights Great Lakes Pipeline Concerns

  An aging network of pipelines that travels in and around the Great Lakes is now being used to transport raw tar sands oil; which has been found to be more corrosive, toxic and unpredictable than transporting conventional or upgraded crudes.
  
  Importing raw tar sands oil into the United States—instead of synthetic crude oil—is a recent and growing development. Without much public knowledge or a change in safety standards, U.S. pipelines are carrying increasing amounts of the corrosive raw tar sands oil through our communities and our Great Lakes.

• Help Stop the Keystone XL Dirty Tar Sands Pipeline

  TransCanada, a Canadian pipeline company, has proposed a massive pipeline which would carry up to 900,000 barrels per day of tar sands oil over 2,000 miles from Alberta, Canada through our heartland to Gulf Coast refineries. The pipeline, called Keystone XL, would cut through six American heartland states threatening the Missouri and Niobrara Rivers, the Ogallala aquifer, sage grouse habitat, walleye fisheries and much more.