GLIN==> West Michigan Oil Spill, They Said It Couldn't Happen Here

Alliance for the Great Lakes
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, July 27, 2010

West Michigan Oil Spill: They Said It Couldn't Happen Here

A decade ago, boosters of oil and gas drilling in the Great Lakes were confident that "it couldn't happen here."

Today, west Michigan woke up to what is being called the Midwest's largest oil spill ever: a slow-streaming gush of reality in the form of a more than 800,000-gallon spill from an oil pipeline into a creek feeding the Kalamazoo River -- a river ultimately draining into a Lake Michigan freshwater estuary near Saugatuck and Douglas.

In 2001, the record of accidents, mishaps and poor enforcement convinced Great Lakes citizens that oil and gas drilling was, is and always would be a bum deal. 

Though operations continue at a handful of grandfathered directional drilling wells in Michigan, state and federal laws banning new drilling are on the books. Yet, as today’s event in west Michigan shows, this is no time to relax our vigilance on fossil fuel development.

Our Great Lakes and the rivers and lakes that feed them are the canary in the coal mine -- they make or break the quality of life for families in Michigan and the other Great Lakes states. But they're also fragile and irreplaceable, and the lakes tell us in no uncertain terms when things are going wrong.

Firmly believing pollution levels in the Great Lakes should be dropping, not rising, we have to stay on the front lines, guarding the Great Lakes from new oil and gas exploration as well as watchdogging refinery expansions proposed to handle the heavy crude oil derived from Canadian tar sands.

Gasping fish and birds covered in toxic goo -- the Great Lakes have been there already and we're not going back. We're spending billions of dollars to dig out from under the spoiled layers of a 20th century legacy. Scheming and speculation that drilling our freshwater coast will bring anything but more ruin to the priceless asset in our backyard does a disservice to the united local, state, federal and binational effort to restore the Great Lakes.

-- Joel Brammeier, Alliance President & CEO 


CONTACT:
Joel Brammeier
jbrammeier at greatlakes.org
773-590-6494





Susan Campbell
Communications Manager
Alliance for the Great Lakes
414-540-0699
Visit http://www.greatlakes.org



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